The president added during a Monday press conference that he prefers a diplomatic solution that includes the Islamic Republic opening the Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump described Iranian leaders as “bullshit artists,” threatening to take out “the entire country” in “just one night” if the Islamic Republic does not accept the terms of his ceasefire proposal by 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Those terms reportedly include an agreement from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a short-term ceasefire as negotiations for a long-term deal take place.
“They’re very good bullshit artists. That’s why, for 47 years, they’ve been bullshitting other presidents, and they haven’t done the job,” Trump said in a Monday afternoon press conference.
The president said that Tehran has until Tuesday evening to accept the terms of his proposal, adding that a refusal will set the country up for total destruction.
“The entire country could be taken out in one night,” he said. “And that night might be tomorrow night.”
He made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the conflict but will not hesitate to strike a range of infrastructure, including bridges and energy facilities. Trump has threatened these targets for days and stood firm on his Tuesday deadline.
“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think in good faith. We’re going to find out.” Trump said. “We’re giving them till tomorrow, eight o’clock Eastern time, and after that, they’re going to have no bridges. They’re going to have no power plants. Stone ages.”
Trump described the Strait of Hormuz as “a very big priority” in peace talks, saying, “We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil and everything.”
Should the regime fail to accept his terms, “very little is off limits” as the military prepares to hit a range of energy sites that generate billions for Tehran. Trump said his administration has a plan in place “where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours.”
Trump noted that he authorized last week’s attack on the country’s largest bridge only after Iranian negotiators balked at a ceasefire offer from Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“I got a call from Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner, and J.D. [Vance], saying, ‘I think they’re breaking the deal,'” Trump told reporters. “I said, ‘Tell them that’s okay, don’t worry about it, but tell them to look out their window, and watch.’ And within 45 minutes I gave the order to knock out the biggest bridge.”
Trump was flanked at the press conference by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine. The three officials detailed two daring weekend rescue operations to secure an F-15 pilot and a weapon systems officer who went down in Iranian territory.
For 45 hours and 56 minutes, Hegseth said, U.S. officials coordinated two separate rescue operations deep inside Iran. Caine added that the first, conducted Thursday into Friday “in broad daylight,” was approved and launched within hours of the two-man plane going down.
U.S. forces “crossed the beach” into Iranian territory supported by fighter jets, drones, and other tactical aircraft that engaged Iranian forces “in a close-in gunfight” to keep them away from the area, Caine said. As military forces departed with the first airman in tow, they were “engaged by every single person in Iran who had a small arms weapon.”
The second U.S. airman, code-named “Dude 44,” was more difficult to locate after he climbed into Iran’s mountainous territory to avoid capture. The wounded airman was eventually able to activate his rescue beacon, allowing the CIA and U.S. military to begin rescue operations over the weekend.
“We deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses to a daunting challenge comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert,” Ratcliffe said. “In addition to the human and technical assets deployed by the president to find our airmen, the CIA executed a deception campaign to confuse the Iranians who were desperately hunting for our airmen.”
By Saturday, the United States had successfully located the weapon systems officer and Trump authorized another rescue operation. The airman’s first message upon activating his emergency transponder was “God is good.”
“In that moment of isolation and danger,” Hegseth recounted, “his faith and fighting spirit shown through. You see, shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday, flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn, all home and accounted for [and] a nation rejoicing. God is good.”
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