US President Donald Trump held a press conference at the 36th Nato summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, where he veered from praising the alliance to threatening Iran and confusing world leaders' names.
Trump's Surprising Praise for Nato
Addressing journalists alongside his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump surprised everyone by directing his affections at an alliance he had spent much of the previous day criticizing. "We just had our Nato meeting, and it was a great meeting," he said. "There was a lot of love in that room today, a lot of unity. It couldn't have gone much better."
This was a stark contrast from earlier, when Trump had sat beside Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and voiced complaints about perceived lack of support on the war with Iran and Spain's refusal to comply with new defence spending targets. Even Zelenskyy, once the target of a notorious Oval Office browbeating, seemed to have risen in Trump's estimation. "We have some good stories to tell," Trump said, talking up prospects for a deal to end Ukraine's four-and-a-half-year war with Russia. "He has done an amazing job."
Darkness Descends on Iran
The mood darkened when the subject turned to Iran. Trump recently agreed to a memorandum of understanding that ushered in a 60-day halt to hostilities, but on Wednesday he declared the ceasefire all but over after US forces struck Iranian targets the previous day. He asserted that Iran had violated the terms by attacking three vessels in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, supposedly reopened under the recent agreement. "We have a score to settle," he said, invoking past Iranian transgressions, including the manufacture of roadside bombs that killed and wounded numerous US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having hailed his own deal just two weeks ago as necessary to prevent an economic disaster equalling the Great Depression if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, Trump now wrote off the possibility of agreement with Iran's leadership. "They violate the agreement every day. They lie, they cheat, they kill people. They've been killing people for 47 years. They knocked out the USS Cole," the US president said, citing Iran's alleged role in facilitating an al-Qaida attack on a US warship in October 2000.
New Goals and Menacing Threats
Having previously settled for reopening the Hormuz strait—through which 20% of the world's fuel supplies pass—Trump said the goal was now "denuclearization," a reference to Iran's capacity to build a future nuclear bomb. "We're going to have a deal. We may just do it without a deal, because you know what, it's easier," he said, menacingly. He paid cursory homage to his chief envoy Steve Witkoff, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and JD Vance, who were instrumental in negotiating the ceasefire. "My whole life is deals, [but] I don't see it with them. Maybe a big attack, and it'll knock out a lot of stuff," he said. US forces would "probably" carry out major attacks on Wednesday evening, he said, including potentially power stations and desalination plants.
Misnomers and Malapropisms
Trump's diatribe strayed into malapropisms and comical misnomers. At one point, referring to missiles supposedly aimed at the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, he said they had been fired by "the Islamic Republic of Japan." In the middle of a homily about Iran's military forces being destroyed, he suddenly switched course to say "one of the thing we are going to be talking about today is … we'll give them the right to make Patriot" missiles—although he appeared to be referring to Ukraine.
After a succession of questions about the Russia-Ukraine war, he asked journalists if they had a question for "President Putin"—while Zelenskyy, the Russian leader's arch-foe, sat just feet away. The moment resembled a similar verbal miscue by Joe Biden at the annual Nato summit in Washington 2024. Possibly mindful of that, Trump attempted a cover-up, insisting he meant to say Putin because he had a scheduled phone call with him later.
Revealing Misstatement
Perhaps his most revealing misstatement was of the name of Iran's late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, buried this week in a state funeral four months after being killed in an Israeli strike. "They wanted to go to the funeral of Khomeini," Trump said, mispronouncing Khamenei's name as that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, who ushered in decades of enmity with Washington after the 444-day siege of the US embassy in Tehran and the holding of 52 American hostages. By conjuring the more historical name, Trump may have been subconsciously revealing his preoccupation with an age-old US grievance—and signalling his urge to get even.
