Friday, July 17, 2026

Trump vows to kill Iranian officials if ceasefire agreement violated

“We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement,” Mr Trump said of Iran at a news conference. “I don’t want them to. I want them to honour the agreement.”

• June 18, 2026
President Trump and Pezeshkian
President Trump and Pezeshkian

The U.S. and Iran released the text of an interim agreement that their presidents signed on Wednesday to end their war.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to resume attacks and kill Iranian officials if they fail to honour their commitments.

Trump, attending the G7 with other leaders in France, also withdrew at least one of his stated rationales for attacking Iran in the first place, saying it would be “unfair” for Tehran not to have ballistic missiles, having previously ‌vowed to obliterate them.

“We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement,” Mr Trump said of Iran at a news conference. “I don’t want them to. I want them to honour the agreement.”

Mr Trump also called Iranians “smart people” as U.S. and Iranian negotiators work on a permanent truce over the coming 60 days, which Mr Trump said he hoped would usher in peace in the Middle East and lower oil prices.

Earlier, he had said, “If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, OK?”

Iran’s leaders did not address the new threats while celebrating the moment, releasing photographs of what is believed to be the first agreement signed by both a U.S. and Iranian president since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.

“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation. It was not even comparable,” Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Qalibaf, told state television about the agreement, which includes the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, assassinating the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and military leaders on the first day. It quickly spiralled into a regional conflict that has killed more than 7,000 people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon; driven up energy prices; renewed inflationary pressures; and sparked concerns about a major food supply crisis in developing countries.

The 14-point agreement extends a ceasefire announced in April by another 60 days, including in Lebanon, to allow the two sides to negotiate a final truce. Mr Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have digitally signed the memorandum in English and Farsi, U.S. and Iran officials said, with Iran’s foreign ministry saying the agreement was already in effect as of Wednesday.

Mr Trump signed just before a grand dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, the site where the eponymous treaty that formally ended World War I was signed.

The memorandum includes an immediate end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, the full resumption of maritime traffic “with no charge” in the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, the waiving of U.S. sanctions on Iran, the unfreezing of its assets, and a $300 billion investment fund for the Islamic Republic’s post-war reconstruction.

Oil prices fell again on Wednesday amid prospects for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the slender, vital waterway between Iran and Oman, with Brent crude futures below $80, at their lowest level since the war’s start. They later regained more than one per cent after Mr Trump threatened renewed violence.

Iran also undertakes not to build nuclear weapons, reaffirming a vow it had made for decades. It also agreed to the on-site “down-blending” of its enriched uranium stockpile under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

(Reuters/NAN)

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