President Trump said in an interview on Sunday afternoon that the agreement he had reached with Iran would ultimately assure that the Strait of Hormuz was “permanently toll-free,” and asserted that, despite the objections of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he had saved Israel from nuclear obliteration.
Mr. Trump also insisted that if Iran failed to reach a final nuclear accord with the United States — a process that his aides say they expect will begin on Friday in Switzerland — he would restart military attacks on Tehran or make the United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20 percent of the region’s revenues.
In a 28-minute phone conversation that Mr. Trump initiated from the White House residence, and a brief follow-up call, the president contended that his decision to attack Iran in late February, and his subsequent naval blockade of its ports after Tehran closed the strait, had remade the Middle East in America’s favor.
Speaking on his 80th birthday, as his family could be heard gathering in the background for a celebratory dinner, he praised two authoritarians — Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — for aiding in the settlement, or at least not interfering in the blockade of the Strait.
“He was a total gentleman,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Xi, whom he visited in China last month. “He didn’t send a tanker, along with 20 destroyers on each side of it, to try and break up the blockade,’’ an act that would have put the Chinese and American navies into potential conflict.
But he excoriated Mr. Netanyahu for mounting attacks that nearly derailed the final agreement.
“He’s a very difficult guy,” Mr. Trump said of the Israeli prime minister, “and to be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for two hours.”
Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States would, if necessary, become a paid police force for the Middle East would be a striking, if very Trumpian, departure. The president would, in effect, be turning American protection of the region — and the U.S. nuclear umbrella — into a mercenary force, there in return for profit. The arrangement would essentially reject the post-World War II American tradition, in which the United States used its power to assure global peace and prosperity.
It is not the first time Mr. Trump has suggested such arrangements in various parts of the world. But pressed on Sunday on whether he had won the agreement of Gulf states to such an arrangement — including American allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — he did not offer a direct answer, suggesting instead that he had just begun to discuss the issue. It would only happen, he suggested, if Iran remained an adversary.
Mr. Trump described Iran’s current leadership, including the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatists. It was a vastly different tone from the one he took on the opening day of the war, when he urged the Iranian people to rise up and take over their government once the American and Israeli bombing was complete. He acknowledged that he had said that, but went on to note that the Iranian people did not have access to arms — and would be slaughtered if they tried.
But he insisted that if Iran’s leaders killed protesters, it would prevent them from getting full sanctions relief and access to $25 billion in frozen funds. That requirement, however, is apparently nowhere in the current text of the memorandum of understanding, and it is not clear how central it would be to the next negotiation.
While the text of the agreement has not yet been published, Mr. Trump seemed to be describing Iranian concessions that the country has not yet made, or that have been kicked to the follow-up negotiations. The memorandum of understanding, for example, suspends tolls in the strait for only 60 days, and then promises a regional dialogue about the future. Iran had never charged tolls before the war, so the president is essentially celebrating a return to the prewar status quo.
Mr. Trump repeatedly compared his new memorandum of understanding to the 2015 agreement reached between President Barack Obama and Iran’s leadership, maintaining that his agreement would assure that Iran “cannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.” Iran agreed to that when it first ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970, and reaffirmed that agreement on the first page of the Obama-era accord.
Over the past three months of negotiations, led by the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Iranians insisted that they would never give up their right to enrich uranium under that treaty. Mr. Trump said they were still negotiating over whether Iran would suspend its enrichment for 20 years. Mr. Trump hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension, but did not want to negotiate via the press.
He also insisted that Iran would be forever limited to enriching at low levels that “could never be used by the military.”
“They can never go beyond a certain amount,” he said. But when asked whether that limit was the same as in the Obama-era agreement — which limited enrichment to 3.67 percent, a level that is usable in power reactors but not weaponry — he said only that the new accord would assure that “they can only enrich for nonmilitary purposes. Forever.”
In both of these areas, Mr. Trump appeared to be celebrating Iranian concessions on issues that will be on the negotiating table in Switzerland — as they were in February, when Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner were conducting negotiations nearly until the bombing started on Feb. 28.
But Mr. Trump knows that the details will be compared with what the Obama administration negotiated, without launching a war that killed hundreds or thousands of Iranians (and more than a dozen Americans). It is clearly an issue that Mr. Trump is sensitive about: Just before calling The Times he posted a criticism of Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, for suggesting that Mr. Obama got more out of his negotiation than Mr. Trump did.
“We negotiated from strength,” Mr. Trump said. “He was basically paying them off.”
Mr. Trump insisted, as his aides have, that Iran would receive no relief from sanctions or release of its frozen financial assets until it delivered on its commitments.
He maintained that he was in no rush to get the near-bomb-grade fuel out of its underground sites, where much of it is buried after the United States dropped bunker-busting bombs on Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, all major nuclear facilities, a year ago.
He said the United States would, over time, join with Iran in “down-blending” the enriched nuclear material, which would bring it to reactor-grade. But he offered no deadline and sounded vague about the timing.
Mr. Trump insisted that it was the missile and bombing attacks on Iran that had made the difference. “They did not want the third attack,” he said. “They do care about living.”
“The bottom line is that those attacks that we made had a huge impact on having this deal made, a huge impact.”
Iran complied with that enrichment limit during Mr. Obama’s time in office and into Mr. Trump’s first term. But after Mr. Trump terminated the deal, Tehran’s leader ordered enrichment at far higher levels — including near-bomb-grade uranium enriched to 60 percent that became the focus of the deepest concerns. It could be turned quickly into fuel for 10 to 12 nuclear weapons.
In the interview, Mr. Trump insisted that the United States would ultimately work with Iran to excavate, down-blend and remove all 12 tons of enriched nuclear fuel that it possesses. In the Obama deal, 97 percent of the country’s stockpile was shipped to Russia.
Mr. Trump also suggested that the United States would have what he called “strong policing powers” to make sure that Iran was not conducting nuclear work in violation of any of its commitments. He said that the previous deal allowed inspection demands to stretch out for months, but that the accord he is striking would provide for near-instant access. Iran has not spoken publicly about any such agreement.
In the course of the conversation, the president sounded in a celebratory mood, talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship event being held on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday evening and the possibility that it could be interrupted by rain. “This happens in wartime,” he said.
Mr. Trump spoke just hours before he was scheduled to leave for the Group of 7 summit in France, and the announcement is bound to transform the tenor of the meeting. While American allies almost universally opposed the American and Israeli attack — and Britain initially triggered Mr. Trump’s ire by not allowing bombers to participate in the first waves from its bases — the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Britain welcomed the new agreement in a statement.
“This is a moment of opportunity to restore regional stability and stabilize the global economy,” they wrote. “It is now vital that the detailed negotiations are concluded and this agreement is implemented rapidly and comprehensively. We are ready to support that effort.”
In his conversation, Mr. Trump was dismissive of the European allies’ initial responses, but said he would welcome them to join now, even while suggesting that it was a little late.
