Washington: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday (US local time) that Iran will be “hit very hard” if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened “very soon.”
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said the United States is “having very good discussions” with Iran. But Tehran denied it is having any talks with Washington.
Trump earlier warned that he was giving Iran a “last chance before decapitation”, he said that they were talking about opening the Strait of Hormuz “literally by tomorrow”.
“I mean they’re going to go quickly, one way or the other. It’s not very complex”, he said on Monday at the Oval Office.
“We’re talking about the Strait, the opening of the Strait, having it open, literally by tomorrow”, he said, but Iran has denied there were any talks with the US.
The contradictory claims leave the gateway to the world for 20 per cent of fossil fuels trapped in uncertainty.
“We are not holding any negotiations with the United States at present”, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said at a news briefing in Tehran.
Speaking a few hours before Trump, he said that except for Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is on a pilgrimage to Iraq, all the negotiators were in Iran.
Trump dismissed it, writing on Truth Social, “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous” because after they “beg” for a meeting “they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions”.
Baqaei did say that Iran was in consultations with Oman, which is across from it on the Strait, for what the Iranian news agency Tasnim described as a “temporary arrangement that would ensure maritime safety in the strategic waterway”.
He said that no other country was involved in Muscat-Tehran talks.
Trump said Iran was spooked by leaks about the planned attack, “very very hard, harder than any” since World War II and pleaded,”We want to talk. We want to talk about the Strait”.
A Memorandum of Understanding on opening the Strait, where shipping was disrupted after the bombing of Iran, was signed by Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian on June 17, but unravelled within weeks after Iran attacked ships in the Strait and the US blockaded Iranian ports.
(IANS)
