After saying his administration would be attacking Iran “very hard”, the US president has urged Iranian leaders to sign a deal. “They should sign the deal, it’s a good deal,” Trump told reporters, saying the proposal on the table prohibits Iran from “ever having a nuclear weapon”. “We want a deal that’s meaningful, we want a deal that works. “We’ll see what happens, but we hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them again hard today… And we’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to the deal but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers.”
“We’re going to be attacking them, and attacking them very hard,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after being asked to clarify his earlier remarks where he said Iran would have to “pay the price” for taking too long to reach a deal. He was then asked if that means the US would resume its bombing campaign. “Yeah, well, based on the helicopter, I guess we have the right to do that,” he replied. Trump has accused Iran of shooting down a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz.