President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared open to Iran maintaining its ballistic missile systems as the United States moves to wind down its war in the region.
Earlier in the spring, the Trump administration had specifically listed destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capacity as one of the core objectives of the war, but Trump seemed to have moved away from that position during a press conference at the G7 summit.
The president said that, over the next 60 days, the other Persian Gulf nations would hash out “non-nuclear” issues on the sidelines of the U.S.’s own negotiations with Iran, suggesting that “because other people have some,” Iran might keep some ballistic missiles.
“Somebody said, ‘You shouldn’t give them one,’ and I have guys — I like some of these guys, but I don’t think they’re smart. ‘Sir, you shouldn’t let them have any missiles.’ I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but [Iran] can’t have them?’” Trump continued. “It doesn’t work that way, you know. It doesn’t work that way. And missiles aren’t the problem. Missiles, they hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”
Later in his press conference, Trump was pressed to explain why his position on the issue had shifted and why the memorandum of understanding itself does not say anything about Iran’s missile capabilities.
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“They have less than other nations now. We knocked out probably 84, 85% of their missiles. The rest of them are underground; they can’t even get them out,” the president countered. “But what are you going to do? Let’s spend another two weeks and give them none? They don’t want to be firing missiles right now. They’re going to have a hard time rebuilding. They’re going to have a hard time rebuilding.”
Watch Trump’s comments in full: