Trump: Putin may be helping Iran 'a little bit' |
Trump: Putin may be helping Iran ‘a little bit’
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DC Bureau: Iran latest 3/13
DC Bureau: Iran latest 3/13
President Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin “might” be assisting Iran in its military operations against the U.S. in an interview that aired Thursday.
“I think he might be helping them a little bit, and he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?” the president told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade.
Trump said that “China would say the same thing.”
“It’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness,” he added.
The president’s remarks follow a report that Russia provided the Iranian regime with information that helped them to locate and strike U.S. bases in the Middle East. Seven American service members have been killed during Iranian counterstrikes on bases in the Gulf nations.
Officials in the president’s administration previously pushed back on concerns that Russia was abetting Iran’s strikes against the U.S., with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth telling CBS News last week that “no one’s putting us in danger.”
“We’re putting the other guys in danger, that’s our job, so we’re not concerned about that,” he told the outlet.
“We mitigate it as we need to,” the Pentagon chief continued. “Our commanders factor all of this, but the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.”
The top commander of U.S. forces in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, declined to confirm or deny Russia’s involvement in these strikes during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.
However, Grynkewich expressed confidence that the U.S. military is “responding robustly to anyone who is assisting the Iranians with targeting U.S. forces.”
Trump’s remarks in this week’s interview come as his administration moved to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian oil to offset rising energy costs during the conflict.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in his announcement on Thursday evening that this “narrowly tailored, short term” measure applies only to Russian oil “already in transit.”
He said the authorization “will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction.”
However, Democrats have pushed back on this relief measure, accusing the Trump administration of allowing an opponent of the U.S. military to benefit from these strikes.
In a joint letter on Wednesday addressed to Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the committee’s Democratic members demanded a hearing with Bessent regarding an earlier relief measure that authorized the sale of Russian barrels to India.
“The Trump administration cannot simultaneously claim to be prioritizing U.S. military operations while offering sanctions relief to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” the legislators wrote.
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