Mr. Trump: I do not want to extend the ceasefire with Iran

“I don’t want to do that. We don’t have that much time,” US President Donald Trump said in an interview on April 21, mentioning the possibility of extending the ceasefire with Iran. “I don’t think they have a choice. They have to negotiate.”

The US President plans to continue bombing Iran if the two sides do not reach an agreement before the deadline on the evening of April 22, US eastern time. “The army is very excited to go. They are truly great,” he said before praising his efforts in rebuilding the US military.

When asked if he planned to carry out his previous threat to bomb Iran’s bridges and power plants, Mr. Trump replied, “I don’t want to have to, but it would hit them hard militarily.”

“They use the bridge to transport missiles and weapons,” he said, adding that both sides took advantage of the truce to consolidate their forces.

President Trump said Iran has great motivation to reach a deal with the US and praised its people, but criticized the leadership in Tehran. “Iran can achieve a very good position if it reaches an agreement with the US. They can once again become a great and powerful country,” he said.

The US leader also said that this country’s forces had blocked a ship carrying a “gift from China”.

“Yesterday we caught a ship carrying some stuff, which wasn’t very good. A gift from China, maybe, I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said.

The US President did not name the ship, but most likely he was referring to the Touska cargo ship captured by the US Navy on April 19 in the Gulf of Oman. The Iranian military has said that the vessel traveled from China.

Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations, accused the ship of being involved in shipments of chemicals used for missiles. “It refused multiple requests to stop,” she wrote on social networks.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun commented that “this container ship is under a foreign flag. China opposes any malicious association and exaggeration,” he said.

China expressed concern about the capture of the Touska, seeing it as an obstacle to a peaceful solution to the conflict. “We hope relevant parties will carry out their obligations and comply with the ceasefire, to prevent escalation of tensions and create conditions for the re-normalization of the Strait of Hormuz,” Mr. Quach said.

The Associated Press quoted two officials in the region as saying that both the US and Iran have signaled that they will hold a new round of negotiations in Pakistan. However, neither Washington nor Tehran have publicly confirmed the date of the dialogue, while Iranian state television denied that officials were present in Islamabad.