Washington, DC/Tehran: Iran will soon become a new market for American agricultural exports, US president Donald Trump has said.
The US would use Iranian funds to purchase wheat, soybeans, and corn as the country grapples with food shortages, he claimed, while addressing the Rose Garden Club Dinner with American farmers.
“We have another one … a new market coming up and that’s called the lovely country of Iran. It’s a beautiful place. Would anybody like to go there? The Islamic Republic of Iran is having a hard time with food and we’re going to be taking some of their money and we’ll spend it and we’re going to be buying w
heat, soybeans and corn …. a lot of it. And that process is going to be starting pretty soon. It’s going to be pretty big too. I think it’s going to be very big,” he said, as reported by timesnow.in.
Tehran, however, rejected the assertion immediately, with Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf calling Trump’s remarks “false” and accusing Washington of spreading “broken promises and trash talks.”
“America falsely claims our unfrozen assets will buy their agriculture. Interesting. The only crop we’re harvesting is what you planted: decades of mistrust. It’s organic, abundant, and homegrown. But apparently the US only exports GMO soybeans, broken promises and trash talks,” Ghalibaf posted on X.
The rebukes follow Trump remarking that initial financial relief under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would include USD 500 million in American goods. Trump insisted that no direct cash would reach Tehran, promising the funds would instead be used to buy corn and wheat from US farmers to alleviate what he described as Iran’s “hunger problem,” Al Jazeera reported.
If Iranian assets are unfrozen, “they’re going to go to make American farmers richer and feed the Iranian people”, US vice president J D Vance had been quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.