Donald Trump2:04:58
That's a terrible statement. All right. The stock market is quite brilliant. Every time we said something amazing like we're going to settle, it would go up. Every time we said something negative like we're not going to be able to settle, it would go down very big. Tells you something. I've studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great, and some really bad — we had one just recently. The one president I did not want to be was the late great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that. Bad things happen. The past few days have provided a chance to discuss the details of the deal with the closest friends and allies. They were all here, far more than the seven. They put out a statement. President Macron did a great job, really fantastic. They all put out statements saying they love this deal because they want to see it over and they love the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is open. Don't forget, if we were going to drop bombs for another month, two, three months, weeks — what do you have left? You don't have the Strait open because people who own billion-dollar ships don't like sailing through when rockets are flying overhead. You wouldn't have oil for maybe years. These are stupid people. But nobody was tougher than me. Nobody hit Soleimani. When I hit Soleimani, people thought that was the biggest thing to happen in the Middle East for 50 years. That was the biggest event. He was the boss of Iran, respected, but a mad genius. He was a genius, the father of the roadside bomb. When you see young men and women walking around without legs, without arms, with faces blown to smithereens — that's Soleimani. 95% — it came from Iran. And I blew him up. I blew him up in a valley. He got off his plane and we followed him. In all fairness, Israel had been wonderful to me, but they didn't want to do that attack. They were all set, but the night before the attack, they informed me they didn't want to do it. I had to make a decision. I made the decision to do it. It was a joint venture between Israel and us. We studied it for a month. We knew what plane he was going to be on almost a month before. He traveled on commercial airliners, big ones with lots of people, because he knew we wouldn't shoot him down. Very smart. We followed him, and Israel informed me they wouldn't do it. I had to make a decision. I had some very good generals — not the ones you see on television — and I want to thank Pete Hegseth and General Razen Kaine, who are phenomenal. I said to them, "If Israel's not going to do it, we're all prepared. Do we do it?" He said, "Sure. If you want to do it, we can do it just as well or better. We don't need anybody." So we took out Soleimani, one of the biggest events in the Middle East maybe ever. The prime minister of Pakistan said it's maybe the biggest event that has ever taken place. Nobody could believe it. That's when it started. It didn't start three, four, or five weeks ago. Obama wouldn't do it. What Obama did was he did the JCPOA. He loaded up a plane with $1.7 billion in green cash from banks all over Washington, Maryland, and Virginia. They were stripped of all their cash; they had no cash to do payrolls. It all went into a Boeing 757 and they flew it to Iran and gave it out to people. They bribed people, thought they were going to get it done. Then they gave billions and billions of dollars after that and got a deal that was a road to a nuclear weapon. I get so angry. I guess I'm allowed to get angry when I watch the Democrats. They talk about it all the time. "We had this deal done." You had a deal that was going to give them legally a nuclear weapon. If that happened, Israel would have been blown away. In all fairness to Bibi Netanyahu, he's a good man, gets a little excited sometimes, but a very good man. We've had an amazing partnership. He's been an amazing prime minister. We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah. But it's been an amazing partnership. He came to the country and begged Barack Hussein Obama not to do the JCPOA. He said it could be the end of Israel, and it would have been if I didn't come along. Obama didn't listen to him. Bibi went to Congress and pleaded with them and got nowhere. They had this horrible deal for Israel. And then I came along and terminated that deal. It had very little time left — it was a short-term deal. With countries, you need hundreds of years, not 8 years. This was a short-term lease. It expired long ago. Had I let it run, you wouldn't have been around; a lot of people wouldn't have been around. Israel would have been terminated. I think the whole Middle East would have been terminated. You saw that when everybody was shocked that missiles were aimed at different places — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. They got hit. Nobody thought that was going to happen. They were going to take out the entire Middle East, including Israel. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it within moments. So I made it very tough for them when I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama catastrophe. The JCPOA is one of the worst deals. NAFTA might have been worse economically, but this deal was really dangerous. He gave them everything including a lot of money, which we won't give them, by the way. We'll be giving this out so you can read it. It's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. I don't want to do that because it's so good, but we might have to because we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. They've agreed not to, and you'll see that clearly in the agreement. The second phase was that they were enriching material — I call it nuclear dust — under granite mountains. Granite is a very strong stone. The B2s came along and hit those air shafts in the dark at 1:00 in the morning with no moon. They had a beam going right up. Those guys did a job. They were criticized by some members of the press like CNN for possibly not doing that much damage. It turned out the damage was far greater. Those mountains collapsed right on top of everything. Nobody's going to get that for a long time unless we want to get it. We're the only ones that can. China has the equipment to get it too, but it's not valuable. Nobody's touching it. We also have cameras. That's what Space Force is. We have the greatest military in the world. I'm proud of Space Force because I started it. We have Space Force cameras on every single door — well, there are no doors, they've been shattered — every area. If somebody walks in with a badge, we can see things you wouldn't believe. That's why we've been so successful. Our blockade will go down in the annals of history as unbelievable. Nobody's ever seen a blockade like that. It's like a steel wall. So we terminated that and the nuclear dust. If we didn't hit that with the B2 bombers, they would have had a nuclear weapon at a very high level. We have much bigger, but we hope we never have to use it. Russia has second most nukes, China is far behind but catching up. We have the most powerful, but Russia's not far behind. We ought to make a denuclearization deal. We don't need to blow up the whole world 300 times over. If we could do a denuke deal, I'd love it. The deal we reached with Iran on Sunday will be signed shortly, tomorrow maybe the next day. Deals are my whole life. I've gone into deals that were a guarantee not to happen and they go like nothing. Most likely we'll sign a deal. They want to sign and they've been acting appropriately. They took two big hits last week. Importantly, Iran has agreed that they will neither produce nor procure a nuclear weapon. Originally they said they would not develop one. I said, "What happens if they buy one?" It's very dangerous for somebody to sell them a nuclear weapon — they would get nuked themselves. So I wanted it in there: develop, procure, buy, anything. You'll see that in the agreement. We sent a copy to Israel. They've been a good partner. Again, I think they could do better with respect to Hezbollah. I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. But when two drones are shot into the desert harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better and do a better job. I love them as a partner, but they could do much better with Hezbollah. I feel very bad for Lebanon — it was a great culture, the doctors, lawyers, incredible for centuries. For the last 50, 60 years, they've been living in hell. They'll work closely with us to turn over the enriched material deep in the earth. Nobody can get it. In the meantime, we have cameras on every inch. If they do anything, we'll hit them with Patriots. Technical discussions on removing all stockpiles will begin immediately. Unlike Obama who sent pallets of cash, any relief they receive under this deal will be based on merit. It won't be from us. We don't have to give them anything. Some people may want to invest — well, they need investment because we did a trillion and a half, maybe $2 trillion worth of damage. Somebody's going to have to help them out. It could be their neighbors. But we're not investing any money. There was a fake news story that JD made a statement — it was a perfect statement, reported in a strange way because it's fake news. We don't give them money. With time, if they behave, become a reasonable citizen of the world, and I think this new group is regime change — the first group is dead, the second group all gone, the third group we've been dealing with. They're tough but smart. Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has already increased substantially. The normal flow of energy will resume. Trillions will be made by the world, and the stock market will continue to rise. Rather than going into a depression or having Herbert Hoover as your favorite president, we'll work on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations on conventional ballistic missiles. They have to have some because other people have some. Somebody said you shouldn't let them have any missiles. I said, "Well, what am I going to do? Let Saudi Arabia have missiles but they can't?" It doesn't work that way. Gulf nations will address non-nuclear issues. I want to thank our partners in Pakistan and Qatar. They worked so hard. Qatar was great because they had right next door — I flew from there to Saudi Arabia and UAE. Two great leaders. Saudi Arabia's father is still alive and fantastic. The son is going to be great. The crown prince of UAE, Mohamed, is an incredible warrior. Every administration for decades has sought to get Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions, but the threat only got bigger. Iran got stronger. If we didn't blow them up and blow out those weapons, they would have been unstoppable. This should have been done years ago. I want to thank all those countries and Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. The breakthrough would not have been possible without the unprecedented pressure the United States put on the regime over the past year and a half. But it started with the death of Soleimani. No president in history has ever been tougher on Iran than I have. If they don't honor the agreement, we'll probably go back to bombing them. The Obama deal was a road to a nuclear weapon. The Trump deal is a wall for a nuclear weapon that the weapon could not get through. It says the most important clause: the Strait opens, but more importantly, they will never have a nuclear weapon. Not in 5, 10, or 20 years. This provides Iran a historic opportunity. With 91 million people, if they follow the path of cooperation, their country will survive. We bombed their biggest bridge, the equivalent of the George Washington Bridge, with an F-22. The most beautiful fighter jet ever made. We're ordering more. We have the greatest military. The B2 bombers are unbelievable. They flew into Iran totally undetected. I hope the peace agreement will be the beginning of a much larger deal across the Middle East. Look at Gaza, Hamas has been very silent. We're trying to get them unarmed. They grew up with a machine gun in their hand. This wasn't the lifestyle they were taught, but they've behaved pretty well. The Lebanon piece is something we'll work on. The big deal is the Iran deal. That's where the money and power was. They have Hezbollah, and we'll get that done. I think Israel can do a much better job. Syria would love to help. I was responsible for the gentleman at Syria who is now president. He's done a tremendous job putting the country together. The expansion of the Abraham Accords is another hope. Saudi Arabia leading the way would benefit everyone. UAE went in from the beginning. Nobody got out. During the war, everybody was afraid of Iran. When the election was rigged, the country went to hell. Allowing 25 million people into the country unvetted — many murderers. That was the least of it. The past two days provided an opportunity to discuss other issues with G7 members. Yesterday morning we had a productive conversation on Ukraine. I spoke with President Putin and President Zelenskyy. Something's going to happen. They both want to do something but don't know how. In our session on international partnerships, I offered an update on leading the world in responding to the Ebola outbreak in Africa — sending $375 million in aid. The rest of the world gave nothing. Today we had excellent meetings on the economy and AI. AI is going to be the biggest thing ever. We have to be careful with it. We're leading China and the world. We're allowing them to build their own electric plants because the grid is old. They'll sell extra electricity into the grid. We found a great deal of unity at the G7. We signed a declaration on illegal immigration — first ever for a G7. We signed agreements to coordinate on drug trafficking. Drugs coming through the border are down 61%. Through the sea, down 97.2%. We agreed to accelerate efforts to secure critical minerals and rare earth supply chains. The G7 agreed that our new approach to international development based on private sector investment is working. I held positive bilateral meetings with President Macron, the Amir of Qatar, President of the UAE, President El-Sisi of Egypt, Prime Minister Modi of India, and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. They're all so happy. Every country is happy. Think of what Israel is getting — they're not going to be nuked. I told Bibi, "Your biggest risk was that they drop a nuclear weapon into Israel. One would be enough." We stopped nuclear holocaust. America is back, bigger and better and stronger. We were a laughingstock two years ago — a man who couldn't find the stairs. We can never let that happen again. The worst inflation ever — it's coming down because oil is bringing it down. This evening, I look forward to a dinner with President Macron and his wife at the Palace of Versailles. I want to check it out — it has a lot of gold. They asked me to stay a bit longer. So I'll get home a little later. We're celebrating the 250th anniversary of America's founding and our oldest alliance. Europe is having hard times with energy and immigration. We'll talk about that tonight. If you want to ask questions, feel free.