US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States will probably take over the Strait of Hormuz and should be reimbursed for controlling the vital waterway.
"We're going to keep the strait, and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that," he said in a phone interview on Fox News's "Fox & Friends" program. "We're taking over the strait. They've got nothing."
"We're going to guard it. We're going to get paid for guarding it - a lot of money," he added. "We're going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy. They're on our side, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing."
Trump added that the US should have taken care of the Iranian threat "47 years ago," noting that the two countries agreed to "everything" during a recent 11-hour meeting in Washington, with Iran then demanding changes to the agreement.
He added that Iran "launched a drone at a ship" an hour after the negotiations concluded.
"Everything's 11 hours with these guys," said Trump. "You know, you can't settle in one sentence and one hour and one minute. It should be one minute. And everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say we had to make a couple of changes."
Trump: Iran 'got nothing from me'
"We're not going to make changes," he added. "Always changes. They just, you know, they're professional negotiators. That's all they are. I don't even call them good at it. They haven't gotten anything; they've got nothing from me. But if you look for 47 years, they've been tapping people along, presidents. Every president got tapped along, didn't do anything, and they became more and more powerful"
President Trump noted that Iran is getting its "a** kicked," emphasizing the effect of US kinetic action on Iranian military hardware and personnel, as well as its leaders.