WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said “anything can happen” when asked about the chances of going to war with Iran during his next term in an interview with Time, coinciding with his being named the magazine’s Person of the Year.
“Anything can happen. Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation,” Trump said, before going on to say he thinks the most dangerous thing happening now is Ukraine shooting missiles into Russia, which he said was a major escalation.
Trump has previously threatened Iran, whose elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have sought to assassinate him, according to the U.S. government. Iran has denied the claim.
During his first term in office, in 2020, Trump ordered a U.S. air strike that killed Iran’s top military commander, Qassem Soleimani.
Trump in 2018 also reneged on a nuclear deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 and re-imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Iran that had been relaxed. The deal had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, a process that can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis)
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