Trump Says U.S. No Longer Needs an Iran Deal as He Assigns Vance a Domestic Focus

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States no longer needs an agreement with Iran. In the same statement, he said he had directed Vice President JD Vance to concentrate on corruption and crime in Democratic-led American cities and states. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote on November 12, adding that the time for such an agreement had long passed. He also claimed that the United States held hundreds of billions of dollars in Iranian money. Trump named Minnesota, California and Illinois in his criticism of alleged domestic corruption, and argued that tackling the criminal activity he described could quickly balance the federal budget. The statement followed his November 9 account of a conversation with Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. Trump said Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and other countries preferred the continuation of the US naval blockade and Operation Iron Gate. In that earlier statement, Trump described preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as non-negotiable. He said Israel and the wider Middle East were protected from Iranian threats, and that the United States remained ready to act if regional developments changed, although he considered that prospect unlikely at the time.