Trump claims Iran working on missiles that can reach US as part of sinister ambitions
President Trump claimed in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that Iran has developed missiles that can strike US military bases in Europe and elsewhere overseas — and is working on weapons that can reach America itself.“This is some terrible people,” Trump told lawmakers of the Tehran regime, which rejected what it called “big lies” from Washington.“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”The president added that despite US airstrikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites this past June, the Islamic Republic wants to start their atomic weapons program “all over … and are, at this moment, again pursuing their sinister ambitions.“We are in negotiations with them,” Trump went on.
“They want to make a deal but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.'”The next round of talks between Washington and Tehran are set for Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland.Trump also quoted reports suggesting that the regime had killed 32,000 of its own citizens in a crackdown following anti-government protests that spread throughout Iran in December and January in response to the tenuous state of the country’s economy.The jaw-dropping figure had been widely reported on social media, but not repeated by any prominent Western official or human rights group.The Human Rights Activists News Agency, which relies on a network of informants inside Iran, estimated Monday that just under 6,500 protesters had been killed in the crackdown, with a further 11,744 cases “under review.”“Just over the last couple of months with the protests, they’ve killed at least, it looks like 32,000 protesters, 32,000 protesters in their own country,” the president said Tuesday night.“They shot them and hung them.
We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.”...