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Strait of Hormuz will be open ‘fairly soon’: Trump ahead of US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan
Trump said that the Strait of Hormuz will be open “with or without” Iran's cooperation.
United States President Donald Trump said on Friday (local time) that the Strait of Hormuz will be open “fairly soon” while talking to reporters ahead of peace talks with Iran in Pakistan.
He said that the Strait will be open “with or without” Iran's cooperation.
"We're going to open up the gulf with or without them...or the strait as they call it. I think it's going to go pretty quickly, and if it doesn't, we'll be able to finish it off," Trump said.
“We will have that open fairly soon,” he added.
The United States President also reiterated his claim that Iran is militarily defeated.
Also read: Iran delegation arrives in Pak as skepticism, preconditions cloud peace talks with US
When asked about Iran charging a toll to vessels passing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said that he is “not going to allow that”.
“No, we're not going to allow that, it's international water. If they're doing that, we're not going to let that happen,” he said.
‘No nuclear weapon’
Trump said that a good deal with Iran for him would be the one where Iran has “no nuclear weapon”. Reiterating his claim that Iran's regime has changed, Trump said, “I think it's already been pretty big regime change but we never had that as a criteria. No nuclear weapon, that 99% of it,” he told reporters.
The US President was also asked if he was open to more talks with Iran or the upcoming negotiations are a “one-and-done talk”, to which he said that he will have to wait and “see what happens tomorrow”.
Also read: ‘Loading ships with best ammunition’: Trump details US plan if talks fail with Iran
"They've been talking for 47 years with other Presidents — and we're not doing much talking."
Trump's fresh remarks come just hours after he described how the US forces were preparing for if the talks do not prove to be fruitful. He said that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if talks in Pakistan fail.
"We have a reset going. We're loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made -- even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart," Trump told the New York Post in a telephonic interview.
He added that if the talks failed, the US would load its ships with "the best weapons ever made and will be using them very effectively".
“But we’re loading up the ships. We’re loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation," he said.
