Trump Said The Ceasefire With Iran Is Over. Oil Prices Are Immediately Soaring
Oil is surging on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said the ceasefire with Iran is over following renewed clashes in the Strait of Hormuz
Brent crude, the international benchmark, soared more than 5% and stood above $78 a barrel at 8:12 a.m. ET. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, gained 4.94% and clocked in at $73.94 at the same time. Stocks were also pointing downward following the developments.
Trump made the remarks about the ceasefire while speaking to press in Turkey, where he is attending a NATO summit. “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” he said.
He went on to describe Iran’s leaders as “scum.” “They’re sick people. They’re led by people, and they’re vicious, violent people,” Trump added, claiming that if Tehran managed to get a nuclear weapon, “they’d use it.”
The president then said that he would allow negotiations to continue, but stressed he doesn’t “care.” “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re a bunch of lying guys.”
The remarks came after U.S. forces launched strikes against Iran, with the Central Command (CENTCOM) saying it hit “over 80 targets with precision munitions as an immediate response to Iran’s latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
“U.S. forces struck Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international commerce flowing through the international trade corridor,” forces.
Trump later told press that the U.S. “attacked very powerfully last night the very dangerous people from Iran.”
“They’re sick. There’s something wrong with them. We say go and do your funeral stuff, and instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships yesterday, and so we hit them very hard last night, very hard. I would say 20 to 120 times tougher,” he added, in reference to the ceremonies for the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran, in turn, launched strikes at Kuwait and Bahrain, with allies Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and Kuwait condemning them and calling them a “flagrant violation of the sovereignty.”
NATO Secretary Mark Rutte, who met with Trump on Wednesday, called the strikes “absolutely necessary.”
The U.S. also revoked its temporary sanctions waiver allowing limited Iranian oil sales, ending a diplomatic concession that had been granted just weeks earlier as part the memorandum.
