Trump said Iran must use money being unfrozen by the US to buy food exclusively from America but Iran said it is under no such obligation
“If Iran doesn’t live up to their agreement, or if they’re not behaving, I will do what I have to do,” Trump told reporters.
Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed an interim US-Iran deal last week, more than three months after the US and Israel attacked Iran and Iran responded with its own attacks on Israel and Gulf states with US bases.
Trump said on Monday Iran was supposed to use the money being unfrozen to buy food exclusively from the United States while Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency cited Iranian central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati saying that Tehran was under no obligation to buy agricultural inputs from the US under the current memorandum of understanding.
“All that money’s coming back in the form of purchases of food which they desperately need. They have 91 million people, they can’t feed them. So, the money that we lift is going to go to our farmers,” Trump asserted.
Hemmati said the remaining frozen funds will not necessarily be used solely for essential goods and could be sent to buy other non-sanctioned goods, Tasnim reported.
