The White House struggled Wednesday to explain and defend President Donald Trump’s threat to end Iranian civilization, with his top spokesperson crediting his tough talk with fostering a fragile two-week ceasefire deal already being tested in the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, was peppered with questions from reporters about why the commander in chief on Tuesday morning threatened to take out not just the Islamic Republic government, but also Iranian civilians. “I understand the questions about the president's rhetoric,” Leavitt told one reporter during a rare, second press briefing in one week at the White House. She then attempted to defend Trump’s Tuesday threat without explaining exactly what he meant by “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Leavitt said that “what the president cares most about is results, and in fact, his very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you are all witnessing today.” Reporters pressed Leavitt on how the United States would maintain its role as a moral leader on the global stage, amid congressional pushback on her boss’ unprecedented threat that included sharp criticism from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. When it was still unclear Tuesday what Trump would do at the deadline he set for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York called the threat “ridiculous bluster,” and House Homeland Security ranking member Bennie Thompson dubbed it “completely deranged.” “Threatening and targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians is not leadership, it is a dangerous abuse of power and potential war crime,” the Mississippi Democrat said in a news release. At several points Wednesday, Leavitt attempted to reframe reporters’ broad questions about American global leadership as a comparison of the U.S. and Iran. “I think you should take a look at the actions of this president over the course of the past six weeks, and the actions of our brave men and women in our United States military, who have … essentially taken out the military of a rogue Islamic regime that has chanted ‘death to America’ for 47 years, that has killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers over the course of the last five decades,” she said. “The president absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime, and for you to even suggest otherwise is, frankly, insulting,” she told one reporter. The White House appeared eager to declare victory and pivot to negotiations with Iranian officials this weekend in Islamabad, Pakistan. Vice President JD Vance will be dispatched to those talks, set to kick off Saturday, along with White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law and private sector financier Jared Kushner. Leavitt claimed at the White House on Wednesday that Iranian officials, during private discussions, had agreed to give up stores of the uranium the government would need to develop a nuclear weapon. To that end, Trump’s top spokesperson described a Tuesday back-and-forth in which Iran submitted a 10-point proposal that the U.S. side revised. That, Leavitt said, was the basis of the ceasefire pact. But on Wednesday, Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted a statement on social media contending Trump had “clearly violated” the ceasefire pact “even before the negotiations began.” The matter of the Islamic Republic’s uranium was part of a broader list of ways Ghalibaf claimed the U.S. side already had violated the pact. “The deep historical distrust we hold toward the United States stems from its repeated violations of all forms of commitments — a pattern that has regrettably been repeated once again,” according to his statement. “Denial of Iran’s right to enrichment, which was included in [the] sixth clause of the framework. … In such [a] situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable.”
