U.S. President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Iran on Sunday, threatening military action and severe economic penalties if Tehran refuses to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Washington.
“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump told NBC News in a telephone interview. “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”
According to Reuters, the warning comes after Iran rejected direct negotiations with the United States last week, despite ongoing indirect talks. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated Tehran’s stance on Sunday, saying, “Direct negotiations (with the U.S.) have been rejected, but Iran has always been involved in indirect negotiations.”
In addition to military threats, Trump suggested he could impose secondary tariffs on Iran, similar to those he previously enacted. “There’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago,” he said. Secondary tariffs would target buyers of Iranian goods, further squeezing the country’s economy.
Speaking later on Air Force One, Trump said he would decide on implementing these tariffs in the coming weeks. “We’ll probably give it a couple of weeks, and if we don’t see any progress, we’re going to put them on,” he said.
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which had imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has ramped up its uranium enrichment, prompting concerns from Western powers that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons—an accusation Iran denies, insisting its program is for civilian energy purposes.
