Contradicting Himself

Trump Keeps Contradicting Himself on Iran

“Locked and loaded.”

DAN SPINELLI

The long-simmering feud between the United States and Iran roared back to life Saturday as the Trump administration pinned blame on Tehran for the recent attacks against crucial Saudi Arabian oil facilities that were carried out with a fleet of drones. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group fighting the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, took credit for the strikes, which “knocked out more than half the kingdom’s oil output for days or more” and sent the global oil market into turmoil, the Washington Post reported.

Suspicion quickly fell on Iran over its alleged role in supplying the weapons. On Twitter, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo faulted the Islamic republic for the “unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply” but provided no evidence for this assertion, which Iran’s foreign minister denied. President Donald Trump hinted at Iran’s involvement in a series of tweets, but he mostly used the burgeoning crisis as another opportunity to attack the media for accurately reporting his past offer to meet with Iran’s leaders without preconditions. That isn’t the only time Trump has contradicted himself on Iran; here are three recent examples, beginning with his preconditions flip-flop:

Trump lies about promise to meet Iran’s leaders without preconditions

On Sunday, Trump lashed out at media reports noting that he’d previously volunteered to meet with Iranian officials without preconditions. “That is an incorrect statement (as usual!),” he wrote on Twitter. This is an easily-disproved lie. Trump has offered to meet with Iran’s leaders. Trump’s advisers, including Pompeo and State Department envoy Brian Hook, have made the same promise publicly.

In June, days after Trump nearly ordered a strike on Iran for downing an unmanned Navy drone, he sat down with NBC’s Chuck Todd for an an interview in which Todd asked if Iran would have to meet some preconditions before Trump would agree to talks.

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said. “No preconditions.”

He previously made that same point last July during a press conference with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, telling reporters he “would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet.”

“No preconditions,” he said. “They want to meet, I’ll meet, whenever they want.”

Once Trump set this new benchmark for negotiations, the State Department reiterated it. Last week, Pompeo told reporters at a White House press briefing that Trump “has made very clear he is prepared to meet with no preconditions.”