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Trump: Global Leaders "Thrilled" About Iran Agreement; Trump: Iran Agreement Has "Everything We Set Out To Accomplish"; Trump: Will Go "Back To Bombing" If Deal Isn't Done In 60 Days; Trump: New Leaders Of Iran Are "Far Less Radicalized"; Trump: Normal Flow Of Energy Will Resume In "Coming Days". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 17, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Phil Mattingly in for Dana Bash. We are awaiting President Trump. Actually, we're not anymore, he's up. Take a listen.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I want to thank President Macron, Brigitte, his really lovely wife, fantastic person, for welcoming us to France for an extremely successful G7 Summit. I would say it's one of the most successful, and this meeting could not have come at a better time.

On Sunday, we reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish, everything and much more. Ending the current conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. That's what it was all about. That was about 99 percent Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They can't develop it, buy it. They can never have a nuclear weapon.

At the same time with this announcement or close to it as people started to think it was going to happen. When Iran was making some very positive statements, the stock market has surged to record highs, picking up thousands of points over the last short period of time, thousands of points, and oil is dropping like it has never dropped before at levels that went in numbers down $7, down $8, didn't ever see anything like that.

But if we didn't do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years, you would never have the Hormuz Strait open. You would never have success. Your market would have -- instead of going up at levels that nobody has ever seen before, would go down at levels that nobody ever saw before, maybe except for 1929 or whatever.

Then you know, all the tough guys. Tough guys don't realize that this wasn't a three-month deal, this was years in the making. You know why? Because I was the one that killed General Soleimani. If I didn't kill General Soleimani, we probably wouldn't be talking right now about this deal because he was a mad genius. They never were able to replace him. But a lot of people forget that the tough guys, you know, the tough guys that would drive the country right down the tubes. The past two days have provided a chance to discuss the details of this historic agreement with many of our closest friends and allies, including the G7 nations, and many presidents and prime ministers. As you saw, Prime Minister Modi was here. We had a long talk. He's a great guy. They are thrilled that we made a deal, every one of them. There's not one nation that came to us and said, please sir, keep dropping bombs on them, please keep dropping bombs, the stupid people say that, but I'm thrilled to report.

And by the way, those last two days were brutal, $200 million worth of bombs, and you know, it is expensive too. By the way, aside from everything else. And they knew I was coming for a third night. We informed them we're coming for a third night. They didn't have their navy, it's sunk. They didn't have their air force, it's gone, not one plane. They didn't have anti-aircraft equipment, so we got free reign.

They didn't have their leaders, but they have a new group of leaders that I think is -- actually, I think they're smarter. I think they're very smart. I think they're far less radicalized, and I think they're -- I think they're really good. They love their country. You know, you talk about regime change, nobody will say that, but I guess that's -- their one set of leaders is all gone, their second set of leaders is all gone. Their third set of leaders a little bit gone, but for the most part, and frankly, I think that's regime change. I think they're going to behave much differently. I think they see a different way of life that they were never exposed to.

So, the one thing I didn't want to see is, I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened, but all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship. It never went down. They didn't like it, the people. You know, the stock market is more brilliant than anybody. There is including, the people on this stage, other than me, of course.

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Let's see, I don't know. What do you think, Scott? Is the stock market more brilliant than you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.

TRUMP: Oh, I said, that's a terrible statement. The stock market is quite brilliant. And every time we said something amazing, like we're going to settle, it would go up. And every time we said something negative, like guess what, we're not going to be able to settle, it would go down very big, Peter, very, very big, tells you something.

And you know, I've studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great, and some really bad. We had one just recently. And the one president I did not want to be was the late great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that, and who knows what would have happened, but bad things happened.

So, the past two days have provided a chance to discuss the details of the deal with the closest friends and allies, the heads of countries. They were all here, a lot of them, far more than the seven, as you know, a lot of them. And they put out a statement, I think President Macron, who did a great job, by the way, did a really bad him. And Brigitte, they did a great job, but they all put out statements saying they love this deal because they want to see it over, and they love the fact that the Hormuz -- don't forget, if we were going to drop bombs, let's say we went another month, another two, three months, maybe weeks, could be another three months, could be whatever.

What do you have left? Maybe nothing, but you don't have -- the Strait will never be opened, because people that own billion dollar ships, these ships cost a billion dollars, they don't like sailing ships or having their ships participate when you go up the coast and you go through the Strait and there are rockets flying over your head. They want to protect their billion-dollar investment. You wouldn't have oil for maybe years.

These are stupid people, but nobody was tough for them, they -- nobody hit Soleimani. When I hit Soleimani, people thought that was the biggest thing to happen in the Middle East for 50 years. That was the biggest event. He was the -- he was the boss of Iran, and respected, but, but he was a mad genius. He was a genius, the father of the roadside bomb.

When you see young men, and in some cases women, mostly men, walking around without legs, without arms, with a face that's been blown to smithereens. It's Soleimani, 95 percent, 96.2 they say, or something. 95 percent, that was Soleimani did it. Happen to come from Iran, and I blew him up. You remember that I blew him up in the valley of death. He got off his plane, and we followed him, and in all fairness, because they'd been wonderful to me, Israel, but they didn't want to do that attack. They were all set the night before the attack.

Then, for me, they didn't want to do it, so I had to make a decision. I made the decision to do it, but they were -- it was a joint venture, as we say in the real estate business. That was a joint venture between Israel and us. We studied it for a month. We knew what plane he was going to be on, almost a month before, he only traveled on commercial airlines, as big ones with lots of people because he knew we wouldn't shoot him down, he's very smart.

But we knew he was going to be on that plane. We followed him, and then Israel informed me that they won't do it, and I had to make a decision. I had some very good generals, and not the ones you see on television, very good. And I want to thank also Pete Hegseth and General Razin Caine was phenomenal. OK, these guys are phenomenal. They can't be better. But I had some good generals, and I said to him, well, if Israel is not going to do it, we're all prepared.

Do we do it? Do you like doing it or not? Sure, if you want to do it, we can do it. How well? We'll do it just as well, or better, do it ourselves. We don't need anybody. So, we took out Soleimani. One of the biggest events to happen, the Middle East, maybe ever, but they say 50 years, they say 100 years.

I was with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, he said it's maybe the biggest event that has ever taken places that nobody could believe it, so that's when it started. It didn't start like three or four or five weeks ago, and Obama wouldn't do it. What Obama did was he did the JCPOA. He loaded up a plane with $1,700,000,000 in green cash from banks all over Washington, Maryland, and Virginia. They were stripped of all their cash. They had no cash to do payrolls.

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It all went into a Boeing 757, a wonderful plane, and they flew it to Iran, and they gave it out to people. They bribed people, they thought they were going to get it done. Then they gave billions and billions of dollars after that, and they got a deal that was a road to a nuclear weapon. I get so angry, I guess. I'm allowed to get angry when I watch these, the Democrats. They talk about it all the time. We had this deal done. He had a deal that was going to give them legally a nuclear weapon, and if that happened, Israel would have been blown away. And in all fairness to Bibi Netanyahu who happens to be a good man, gets a little excited sometimes, but he happens to be a very good man.

We've had an amazing partnership. He's been an amazing prime minister. We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it, that's from Hezbollah, but it's been an amazing partnership, but he will say, we're the big partner, and he's the very small partner, and that's true.

So, he came to the country, and he begged Barack Hussein Obama, the president, not to do the JCPOA. He said it could be the end of Israel, and it would have been if I didn't come along, and Obama didn't listen to him. Bibi actually went to Congress and pleaded with them, and he got nowhere, and they had this horrible deal that was horrible for Israel, horrible for Israel, and that's where it stood.

And then I came along, and I terminated that deal. It had very little time left, you know, it was a short-term deal. You know, with countries, you need hundreds of years. You don't need eight years and nine years. This isn't like you're signing a lease on a candy store, the corner. You need hundreds of years. This was a short-term lease. It expired long ago. Had I let it run, it expired. You wouldn't have been around.

A lot of people wouldn't have been around, but Israel would have been terminated. I think the whole Middle East would have been terminated. You saw that when everybody was shocked that all these missiles, they were aimed at these different places; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., think of it, Bahrain, Kuwait, they got hit. Nobody thought that was -- even I, I didn't think it was going to happen. They didn't think it was going to happen. They were going to take out the entire Middle East, including Israel, and if they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it with it within moments after getting it.

So, I made it very tough for them when I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama catastrophe. JCPOA, one of the worst deals, NAFTA might have been worse, but that was worse economically. This deal was really dangerous. What he did, he gave them everything, including a lot of money, which we don't give them, by the way. Just in case you have any question, we'll be giving this out, so you can read it, and you can see that it's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. You know, I don't want to do that because it's so good, but we might have to, because we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon, but they've agreed not to, and you'll see that very clearly in the agreement.

But then the second phase of that was they were building, or they were enriching material, as they say, I call it nuclear dust. They were enriching material under granite mountains, granite being for those not in the construction business, granite being a very strong, the strongest stone. It's not as pretty as marble, but it's much more -- it's much stronger, it's a lot stronger, like the new granite I put on the stairs of the White House, going to the Oval Office, the black granite.

It's rated 1 million years plus, no marbles rated that, marbles rated 100 years if it's -- if it's outside. So, these are granite mountains, and the B-2s came along, and they hit those air shafts in the dark at 1 o'clock in the morning with no moon. They had a beam going right up everywhere. Those guys did a job, and then they were criticized by certain members of the press, like CNN, for possibly not doing that much damage and it turned out that the damage was far greater.

Those mountains collapsed right on top of everything. Nobody is going to get that for a long time, unless we want to get it. We will get it. But we're the only ones that can, and they say China has the equipment to get it, and we have the equipment to get it. And it's actually not valuable, not a lot of value, but would like to get it psychologically, but nobody's touching it.

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We also have cameras, that's what Space Force is. We have the best -- we have the greatest military in the world, by the way, but I'm proud of Space Force because I started it. We have Space Force cameras on every single door, every -- well, there are no doors, have been pretty well shattered, but every area of that, if somebody walks in and he's got a badge with his name on it, like Mohammed something, which is about a 50-50 guess, Mohammed something. They can tell the name, they can give you a serial number, they -- we can see things you wouldn't believe, the quality of the stuff that we have.

That's why we've been so successful. That's why our blockade will go down in the annals of history as being unbelievable. Nobody's ever seen a blockade like that. They're just like a steel wall. So, what happened is, we then terminated that and I call it the nuclear dust and that was the end of that. But if we didn't hit that with the B-2 bombers, or if it wasn't successful, they would have had a nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb at a very high level, not the highest, but it would have been a very high level.

We have much bigger, but we hope that we're never going to have to use it. We have the most. Russia has second. China is very far behind but going to catch up. Unfortunately, you know, they're catching up, but we have the most. We have the most powerful, but we also have the most. But Russia is not far behind. And then you have China in third place, but within five years they will be probably even, and we ought to make a denuclearization deal be so great. We don't need all of that.

We don't need to be able to blow up the whole world 300 times over. It's terrible, really. If we could do a denuke deal, I'd love it. And one of those two is very willing to do it. I will tell you. The other one is less willing to do it, and you need all of them. So, the deal we reached with Iran on Sunday will be signed shortly, tomorrow, maybe the next day.

Thank you. Subject deals. All my whole life is all about deals, that's all I ever did is make deals, and crazy things happen with deals. I've gone into deals where it's a guarantee, no way it cannot be signed, and it doesn't get signed. And I've gone into deals that you have no chance of making, and they go like nothing, so, but we're going to most likely sign a deal. They want to sign a deal, and they've been acting very appropriately. They took a big two hits last week. Those were two very big hits.

So, importantly, Iran has agreed that they will neither produce, nor procure a nuclear weapon, neither produce, because originally, they said they talk about that they will not develop a nuclear weapon, and some people found it OK. These guys didn't, and often this, but some people -- but I didn't like it. I said it won't develop. I said, what happens if they should buy? I don't know.

It's pretty very dangerous for somebody to sell, because whoever sells them a nuclear weapon will get nuked themselves if they sold a nuclear weapon, only a few that could do it. They would be nuked. They wouldn't have that country long. So, it's a very dangerous thing for somebody to do, but I wanted it in there. So, it's develop, procure, buy anything, and you'll see that when you see the agreement. But it's appropriate that we released the agreement, and we did send a copy to Israel, by the way, they've been a good partner.

Again, I think they could do better with respect to Hezbollah. I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and dropped harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better, and frankly, they could do a better job. I love them as a partner, they were terrific, but they could do a much better job with Hezbollah on that.

I don't think they're doing well, and I feel very bad for Lebanon. Lebanon has been -- you know, it was a great culture. It was a great -- they had the professors, the doctors, the lawyers. It was an incredible culture, maybe the highest in the Middle East for years and years, centuries. And for the last 50, 60 years, they have been just trashed. They have been -- they have been living in hell.

So, they'll work closely with us to turn over the so-called enriched material that's very deep in the bowels of the earth, very deep. Nobody can get it, so it's not important that we do it quickly, but we could do it fairly quickly. When we have a chance, we'll do it, but in the meantime, we have cameras on every inch of it. Nobody can do it. And if they do, we'll hit them with patriots. That's all, and they'll be gone, and they know that. Technical discussions on the removal of all stockpiles of enriched materials will begin immediately. We're going to start that immediately.

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And unlike Barack Hussein Obama, who sent a grand palace of cash, and any relief they receive under this deal, they'll have to get based on merit, and it won't be from us. We don't have to give them anything, but some people may want to invest. Like, what are you going to do? Say, you can never ever invest in a country. I mean, it's pretty tough. I don't mind being tough, but it's pretty crazy.

You can invest in a country, you can invest in any country you want, but you can't invest there. Well, they need investment, because we did a trillion and a half, maybe $2 trillion worth of damage, so somebody is going to have to help them out. There's no guarantee about helping them out and could be their neighbors will help them out a little bit. I don't know, but it's a lot of money. Almost nobody has that kind of money. That's the kind of damage that was done.

But we're not investing any money. There was a fake story. There was a fake news story that got a man, a person, a good person, J.D. made a statement. It was a perfect statement. And they reported it in a very strange way, but that's because -- that's why it's fake news, I guess.

So, we don't give them money. We don't give them any of that. And what happens is, with time, if they behave, if they be a citizen of the world, a reasonable citizen of the world. And I think this group, again, I think I didn't do this for regime change, but I think this group is regime change.

Hey, the first group is dead. One little morning, having breakfast, the whole group, they thought they'd never be caught, because we never bombed during breakfast, but we bombed, and they all, 88 people, and I'm not proud of that at all. But the second group came in, and they were very unreasonable too. And they were all gone, they were all gone. And then the third group, we've been dealing with a couple of -- couple left this planet, but we've been dealing with them.

And again, they've been fine, I mean I've had a lot easier. I've had some easier ones, they're tough, they're smart. Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has already increased very substantially, and a normal flow of energy will resume in the coming days, and trillions of dollars will be made by the world, and the stock market will, I believe, continue to rise. The only difference is that a player that's very volatile, very tough, very smart, frankly, you know, they have in one way a primitive culture, but it's also a genius primitive culture. They're very smart people, very good negotiators, but so are we.

So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover. I was always the one I didn't want to be. I wouldn't have preferred Nixon, I wouldn't have preferred nearly I wouldn't prefer, but the one I always thought of, Herbert Hoover, and he caused it. He raised taxes too fast, and he raised interest rates too fast, all at the same time, and it caused the great depression. So, I don't think I'll make mistakes like that.

I lower taxes, I don't raise taxes. In fact, we just gave you the largest tax decrease, largest tax cut in the history of our country. So, we'll be working on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations to address non-nuclear issues, such as the conventional ballistic missiles, which we'll be talking about, and support. I mean, they have to have some because other people have some, they got to have some. Somebody said, you shouldn't give them one, and I have guys, I like some of these guys, but I don't think this -- don't think they're smart.

Sir, you shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can't have them? Yes, sir. It doesn't work that way, you know, it doesn't work that way. Missiles aren't the problem. Missiles are -- they hurt a little location, but they don't blow up the planet.

So, the Gulf nations will address the non-nuclear issues, as we'll be talking about the ballistic missiles, and we'll talk also about the terrorist proxies that they have that we don't want that to happen, but I want to thank our partners in both Pakistan and Qatar. These people worked so hard, and they knew him a little bit. The case of Pakistan quite well. In the case of Qatar, they were sort of at odds, and you know, Qatar was great because they had right next to her.

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When I flew from there, from that location to Saudi Arabia, I'd fly for 40 minutes, and I'd fly to U.A.E. for 40 minutes. Two great leaders there, by the way. Case of Saudi Arabia, the father is still alive, and he's fantastic, and the son is going to be great. He's going to be great. The Crown Prince and Mohammed at U.A.E. is an incredible warrior. He was dropping bombs last week. I said, who the hell is dropping all those bombs? It was U.A.E. He's a good fighter, Mohammed.

But every administration for decades has sought to get Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions, but the threat only got bigger, the words got bigger and bigger and stronger and bigger and nothing ever happened. And Iran got stronger and tougher. If we didn't blow them up the first time and then blow out those weapons, they would have been unstoppable. This should have done what I'm doing, and what I did, should have been 10 years ago, would have been much easier, much less firepower, but it wasn't.

And again, I want to thank all those countries. I want to thank Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. So, obviously, the breakthrough would not have been possible without the unprecedented pressure the United States put on the regime over the past year and a half. But again, it started a long time ago. It started with the death of Soleimani. That was a big deal. No president in history has ever been tougher on Iran than I have, and they know that.

And, by the way, if they don't honor the agreement, or some things aren't even mentioned in the agreement, it's a memorandum of understanding, but we have an understanding of certain things without writing it. And if they don't honor that, we'll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it. You know, it's amazing what bombs can do.

So, I say it, the Obama deal was a road to a nuclear weapon and let's call it the Trump deal, was a wall for a nuclear weapon that the nuclear weapon could not get through. Nobody's going to get through it. We built a wall, they weren't going to have it, and that's what we have right now. And it says very clearly, the most important clause to me, too.

Number one, the Strait opens, but that's much less important than the other clause. Close number, whatever, five, eight is a very strong statement that they will never have a nuclear weapon, and it doesn't say they'll have one in five years or 10 years or 20 years. With Obama, they were able to enrich very quickly. This agreement now provides Iran with a historic opportunity. If they follow the path of cooperation, we'll have open for them, their country will have a chance to survive.

Now, think of it. You know, they have 91 million people. People want me to bomb the bridges. Why don't I bomb? I already did, because you know, they went back on one of their promises, and I bombed their biggest bridge, the equivalent of the George, that was the George Washington Bridge of Iran, but we bombed that bridge, you saw that. One quick strike by an F-22, the most beautiful fighter jet ever made, by the way, fact, we're ordering some more of them. We're bringing it out because it's so effective. It's incredible. It's incredible.

Look, we have the greatest military in the world. Those B-2 bombers are unbelievable. Who would have thought they could handle, each had two, because the flight was so long, but they handle three of the biggest, heaviest bombs, hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they handle them like they're nothing. It's amazing. And also, they're undetectable. They flew into Iran, totally think of it, totally undetected.

Now Iran is waiting for them. They're waiting for them, and they never saw them. 1 o'clock in the morning, they never saw them. They're stealth and we just ordered 22 more. The newer upgraded version, which I guess is better. I don't know how you get better. But as I expressed to the world leaders here this week, it's my hope that the peace agreement will be the beginning of a much larger deal all across the Middle East. We're very close.

Look at the job we've done in Gaza. Look at Hamas. Hamas has been very silent. You haven't read anything about Hamas, and we're trying to get them unarmed. You know, they grew up with a machine gun in their hand. I think they actually -- when they were born, they came out with a machine gun in their hands. That's not the easiest thing, but they've actually behaved pretty well, considering this was not the lifestyle that they were taught to have.

But including an end to all Iranian aggression, and they're not going to be Iranian aggression, and an end to war and terror in Lebanon. So, the Lebanon peace is something we'll have to work on a little bit. It's a very small piece of the puzzle, actually, but it still makes a lot of noise. The big deal is the Iran deal. That's where the money is, where the power was, but they have Hezbollah, and you got to get that done one way or the other will do it.

I think Israel can do a much better job on it. Syria would love to do it. I was very responsible for the gentleman at Syria, that's now the president of -- he's done a tremendous job. He's put that country together