'There will be obliteration': Trump says he doesn't want war with Iran

Published time: 21 Jun, 2019 22:45

Edited time: 21 Jun, 2019 23:07

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USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East May, 2019 ©Reuters/HM/RR

President Donald Trump doesn’t want war with Iran, but if it happens, there will be “obliteration like you’ve never seen before,” he told NBC, adding that there are “no pre-conditions” for US talks with Iran.

“You can’t have nuclear weapons,” Trump said, implying anything else was open to discussion - and if Tehran doesn’t want to talk, “you can live in a shattered economy for a long time to come."

The statement comes after Trump said he had cancelled a Thursday night strike on Iran at the last minute that would have come in retaliation for the American spy drone shot down over Iranian airspace.

ALSO ON RT.COMUS planned to hit 3 different sites in response to Iran, was told 150 people would have died – Trump

The president stressed that learning that “150 Iranians” would be killed if he called for the prepared airstrikes made him think twice, realizing that the deaths would not be “proportionate” to the loss of a single unmanned surveillance vehicle.