White House staffers were reportedly left “baffled” by President Donald Trump’s claim Tuesday that he had received a gift from Iran, about which he then refused to disclose anything further.
“They’re gonna make a deal,” the president said of Tehran in the Oval Office as he swore in Markwayne Mullin as his new Homeland Security secretary, replacing Kristi Noem.
“They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money,” he added. “I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize, and they gave it to us.”
“That meant one thing to me. We’re dealing with the right people,” he concluded.
The president was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the details thereafter, but, having started a guessing game among the assembled press corps, did begrudgingly reveal a few clues.
It was “oil and gas related,” he said, and relevant to the Strait of Hormuz, the effective closure of which by Iran has sent global fuel prices soaring, given that one-fifth of the world’s oil is shipped across its waters.
According to Politico’s West Wing Playbook newsletter, Trump’s cryptic remarks even sowed confusion among his own inner circle, with several people close to the White House telling the publication they were “baffled by the president’s remarks.”
The Independent has reached out to the White House for further comment, although it declined to answer all follow-up questions Tuesday.
Initial speculation that Trump might have been referring to the Omega Trader, a supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil, was dampened after Bloomberg reported the vessel had not been able to successfully traverse the strait, despite reports to the contrary.
Joking about the situation on Tuesday’s episode of The Daily Show, host Josh Johnson suggested it could be a literal Trojan Horse and imagined a naive Trump shaking the box to determine its contents: “It’s ticking. I bet it’s a watch!”
What happens next in the Iran conflict is unclear, given that the president is reported to have submitted a 15-point peace plan for the regime’s consideration while also preparing to deploy specialized paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, a development the Islamic Republic is said to be “closely monitoring.”
The New York Times has suggested the paratroopers could be used to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main export hub, which handles 95 percent of its outgoing crude oil.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a long-time Iran hawk, urged Trump to take that step during an interview with Fox News Sunday, telling him: “Control that island. Let this regime die on a vine.”
But the president began the week on a more peaceful footing, claiming to have entered “very good and productive” talks with Tehran while announcing a five-day ceasefire, averting a planned bombing campaign targeting the country’s power plants. The regime then accused him of issuing “fake news” and said the U.S. camp was “negotiating with yourselves.”
Asked about Iran’s denials, the president said: “Well, they’re going to have to get themselves better public relations people. We’ve had very strong talks. Mr. [Steve] Witkoff and Mr. [Jared] Kushner had them. They went perfectly.”
Iran responded to that by launching a fresh wave of missile strikes on the U.S. and Israel’s allies across the Gulf.
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