U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he will impose additional sanctions on Iran in an effort to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, adding that military action was still a possibility.
Trump, who was speaking to reporters at the White House, made his comments after recently calling off military action against Iran to retaliate for the downing of a U.S. military drone.
“We are putting additional sanctions on Iran,” Trump said. “In some cases we are going slowly, but in other cases we are moving rapidly.”
The U.S. president said military action “is always on the table” against Iran. But Trump also indicated he was open to reversing the escalation, adding he was willing to quickly reach a deal with Iran that he said would bolster the country’s flagging economy.
“We will call it ‘Let’s make Iran great again.'”
Trump spoke to reporters as he prepared to depart Washington for the presidential retreat Camp David in Maryland, where he said he would be deliberating on Iran.
Washington has ramped up sanctions pressure on Tehran since last year and several violent incidents in the Gulf have been blamed on the rising tension.
Trump on Friday said he had called off preparations for a U.S. military strike on Iran at the last minute over the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone hours earlier.
Iran summoned the United Arab Emirates’ top envoy to Tehran to protest the neighbouring Arab nation’s decision to allow the U.S. to use a base there to launch the drone that Iran says entered its airspace, state media reported Saturday.
Iran issued a “strong protest” to the UAE diplomat, saying Iran does not tolerate the facilitation of foreign forces that violate its territory, the report by the official IRNA news agency said.
The U.S. said its RQ-4A Global Hawk was shot down Thursday over international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, not inside Iranian airspace.
The downing by elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces marked the first time the Islamic Republic directly attacked an American military action amid mounting tensions over Tehran’s unravelling nuclear deal with world powers.