United States President Donald Trump told Al Jazeera he has “no time schedule” for when he expects Iran to return to the negotiating table to end the conflict the US began months ago.
“I have no time schedule, none. I’m not in a hurry. I have no time schedule at all,” Trump told Al Jazeera’s Tanya Noury on Wednesday, after he was asked how much time he was giving Iran to return to talks.
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“We are winning very big,” Trump said. “They’ve got massive inflation, their economy is falling apart, they’re treating their people very badly, they are killing many, many protesters. I have no time schedule; whatever it takes.”
Asked whether economic measures were more effective than military strikes, Trump told Al Jazeera, “I think they are both effective.”
This Friday marks six months since the US war on Iran began.
The comments depart from previous statements by the US president. After launching the war on February 28, Trump went on to repeatedly downplay how long the conflict would last, saying at one point it would be over in “four to six” weeks.
In June, the US and Iran signed a 60-day memorandum of understanding that was supposed to deal with issues like transit through the Strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions on Iran and starting talks on how to deal with Tehran’s nuclear programme. That agreement expired earlier this month.
Enhanced sanctions to bring Iran back to talks
On Monday, the US announced enhanced sanctions on Iran and 60 entities in various countries doing business with the country, in what officials have called an “economic D-Day” and the administration has dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast“.
In response to the announcement of the new sanctions, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the latest US sanctions as a threat to international law and the United Nations charter, saying in a statement that “the issue is no longer limited to Iran.”
“No honorable state that values its sovereignty and national interests will accept the normalization of such gross lawlessness and systematic bullying,” it said.
The war with the US and sanctions have already made life difficult for ordinary Iranians, who have seen their currency fall at a staggering pace and the prices of essentials like food and medicine skyrocket. The Iranian rial has fallen to a new all-time low against the US dollar, dropping past 2 million rials to $1 on the free market. Before the war, 2 million rials could buy about four kilogrammes (nine pounds) of tomatoes, half a kilo (one pound) of chicken and a little less than a litre (34 ounces) of cooking oil. Today, the same amount buys about half as much, with the average price of tomatoes increasing by 71 percent, chicken by 74 percent and cooking oil by 177 percent.
Analysts have questioned whether the economic measures can force Iran to return to talks with the US. In particular, the US has not targeted major Chinese entities involved in trade with Iran. At least 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports end up in China, netting Tehran tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
When asked this week why the US did not immediately target those Chinese entities, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded by saying, “Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”
Tehran has proven more resilient during this conflict than Washington expected, analysts say, and new sanctions will likely make things more difficult for Iranians, but are unlikely to force Iran to reach an agreement with the US. “I think they will likely be quite impactful and painful for the Iranian people,” Trita Parsi, the head of the Washington, DC-based Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera. “But translating that pain into a shift in their policy is a completely different thing.”
