by Sharon Rondeau
(Jun. 17, 2026) — At exactly 12:00 noon EDT Wednesday, flanked by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump began a press conference from the G7 Summit in Évian-Les-Bains, France, first thanking French President Emmanuel Macron for hosting the annual meeting.
Sounding hoarse and giving his address two hours later than scheduled, Trump said every nation’s representative at the G7 was grateful for the agreement Trump has said was reached with the Islamic Republic of Iran announced Sunday.
The U.S.’s attacks on Iran, Trump said, wreaked considerable damage on the rogue nation that has sponsored terrorism for nearly a half-century and declared the U.S. and Israel enemies requiring destruction.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump said, referring to the arduous negotiations with Iran in recent weeks. “Every time we said something amazing like ‘We’re going to settle,’ it would go up,” Trump said, speaking of the U.S. stock market.
He said he did not want to acquire the same legacy as President Herbert Hoover.
Macron and his wife Brigitte “love this deal,” he said, paraphrasing what they reportedly told him about the Iran agreement.
“People that own billion-dollar ships…don’t want to participate…when there are rocket ships flying over their head,” he said of the blockade the U.S. imposed on the Strait of Hormuz and slowdown in international shipping traffic.
He recounted the January 3, 2020 U.S. killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.
The initial attacks on Iran which took place on February 28, he said, were planned with Israel for “a month.”
He criticized the JCPOA entered into by Barack Hussein Obama with Iran in which Obama sent $1.7 billion to Iran as “a road to a nuclear weapon.”
Obama has of late been critical of the impending agreement the Trump administration has reportedly brokered.
Of Israel, he said “it’s been an amazing partnership” but that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “gets a little excited sometimes,” referring to Israel’s recent attacks on Hezbollah in Beirut.
At the time Trump asked Israel to stop firing on Lebanon in the wake of the impending Iran agreement, to which Israel is not a party.
“I made it very tough for them when I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama catastrophe…this deal was really dangerous, what he did…We’ll be giving this out, this Memorandum of Understanding,” he said finally, referring to the current accord many are eager to see.
“They were enriching material under granite mountains,” he said of the Iranian nuclear program which he claims Iran has agreed to abandon.
The MOU, he said, allows for a 60-day period for additional negotiations. If it fails, he said, it will prompt the United States to “return to bombing.”
“We have Space Force cameras on every area” of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility, he said. “We can see things you wouldn’t believe…that’s why we’ve been so successful.”
The blockade, he said, “is like a steel wall.”
Speaking of last June’s attack on three Iranian nuclear sites, he said Iran’s capability in that regard was significantly impaired.
“The deal we reached with Iran on Sunday will be signed shortly, tomorrow or maybe the next day,” he said. “…that’s my whole life; all I ever did was make deals,” he said.
“We’re going to most likely sign the deal; they want to sign the deal, and they’ve been acting appropriately…Iran has agreed they will neither produce nor procure a nuclear weapon…” he said.
“Whoever sells them a nuclear weapon will be nuked themselves,” he said of the possibility Iran might have taken the liberty of acquiring one from another country outside of a deal lacking specific wording precluding it.
He said although “a good partner” to the United States, Israel “could do a much better job with Hezbollah.”
The Iranian nuclear material, contained “in the bowels of the earth,” will be turned over to the U.S., he said.
As for “investment” in Iran, Trump said the United States will not be contributing but that he cannot stop any other entity from investing given the damage U.S. military forces did to the country since February 28.
“Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has already increased substantially,” he said.
He characterized the Iranians as having a “genius culture” and of being adept negotiators.
Taxes are down for U.S. citizens, he said, unlike what Herbert Hoover effected during his presidency.
He complimented Middle East Arab nations for working with the United States in the current conflict. “What I did [to Iran] should have been done years ago,” he said. He also thanked Netanyahu.
“No president has ever been tougher on Iran than I have,” he said, “and they know that.”
“If they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they do honor it,” he said of the accord.
The “Trump deal,” he said, is a “wall” against Iran’s further development of a nuclear weapon which “now provides Iran with the historic opportunity…to survive.”
“They only have 91 million people,” he said.
An F22 bomber, he said, destroyed a major Iranian bridge. “Those B-2 bombers are incredible…hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they handle them like they’re nothing,” he marveled.
“We just ordered 22 more [bombers],” he said.
He said he hopes the “deal” will begin a new phase in Middle East relations, including “an end to all Iranian aggression and an end to war…in Lebanon,” he said.
“The big deal is the Iran deal,…but they [Lebanon] have Hezbollah, and we’re going to get that done one way or another.”
He said Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, “has put that country together in a year and a half.”
“A Boy Scout’s not going to work,” he said he told would-be al-Sharaa detractors, citing his “al-Qaeda” background.
Lebanon’s leader, Joseph Aoun, he said, has “tough groups of people” to handle and will be coming to the White House in the near future.
In 2020, he said, “the election was rigged,” and the “Middle East was the least of it…”
Changing topics, he said “allowing 25 million people into the country,” referring to the Joe Biden presidency.
“…so this was the least of it, but the past two days have also provided” an opportunity to discuss the Ukraine-Russia war, Trump said. “Both are losing a lot; Russia’s losing more…we had a very good conversation with President Putin and another very good conversation with President Zelensky,” he said.
As for the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Trump said the U.S. “gave $375 million” to assist while the rest of the world gave “essentially nothing.”
G7 meetings Wednesday encompassed discussions on the global economy, he said. “We’re leading China, we’re leading the world…”
Also at the summit, he said, “illegal immigration,” the movement of illegal drugs into the United States and “rare-earth supply chains” were topics of discussion.
He enumerated one-on-one meetings with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, India, Qatar and Egypt, among others.
“We stopped a nuclear holocaust,” he said. “From the beginning to the end it was clear that America is back as a country, stronger than ever…”
He again decried Biden’s time in the White House, saying Biden “should never have been there” by virtue of his incapacity.
He will be dining this evening with the Macrons at the Palace of Versailles and will be “home a little bit later” due to a detour to Paris, he said.
He criticized Europe for “doing some things very badly,” then opened the session to reporters’ questions.
The first to be called upon was Fox News’s Peter Doocy, who asked about the reported $300 billion fund for rebuilding Iran.
Trump estimated it will take Iran “15-20 years to rebuild” and that “they’ll be hit again” if the regime “misbehaves.”
He publicly thanked Putin for not selling weapons to Iran.
One way Iran has been weakened, he said, is that the U.S. “froze” Iranian assets, “and one day I guess we’ll have to give it back.”
Doocy asked the president how he would try to “convince” Americans the deal was worth pursuing, to which Trump said a full surrender on Iran’s part would have been desirable but that “we need a fair press.”
“The media has so little credibility”…”and they never give good stories, no matter what I do,” he said.
“If I went out and continued to bomb them…I’d get bad press on that…there’s nothing I can do,” Trump said. “Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks…”