Iranian leaders fear “being killed by their own people”

The American president made the statement in a speech at the annual fundraising dinner of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), held in Washington.

“No one has seen anything like what we are doing in the Middle East with Iran. They (Iranian leaders) are negotiating, in fact. They really want to make a deal, but they are afraid to say so because they think they will be killed by their own people. They are also afraid of being killed by us,” Trump said.

The Republican reiterated an argument he had previously presented: that other American presidents should have been tougher on Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“When I did something that, for 47 years, should have been done by any of the other presidents, (it was because) we had no choice,” he said.

“In the short term, what we had to do was get rid of the cancer. We had to root out the cancer. The cancer was Iran with a nuclear weapon. We rooted it out. Now we’re going to root it out,” Trump said.

In a publication on the Truth Social network this Thursday (26), the American president spoke again about the subject.

“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘weird’. They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing, since they have been militarily annihilated, with no chance of recovery, and yet they publicly declare that they are just ‘analyzing our proposal’. WRONG!!! They better get serious about this soon, before it’s too late, because once that happens, there will be NO GOING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!”, the Republican wrote.

On Wednesday, Iran’s English-language state broadcaster, Press TV, reported that Iran’s regime rejected Trump’s 15-point ceasefire proposal and sent a counterproposal, which would include a halt to the “assassinations” of regime members; measures to ensure that no further wars are waged against the country; “reparations” for the conflict; the end of hostilities; and the “exercise of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz”.

Despite this, Tehran denies that it is negotiating directly with the US. Yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the US has sent several messages in recent days through other countries, but that no negotiations are taking place.

“The fact that they are talking about negotiations now is exactly an admission of defeat,” said Araghchi, in an interview with state broadcaster Irib.

“The fact that messages are being sent and we respond with warnings or declare our positions is not called negotiation or dialogue: it is an exchange of messages,” claimed the Iranian foreign minister.