Trump threatens both Iran and NATO allies ahead of primetime address on war: ‘Back to the Stone Ages’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he rejected a new request for a ceasefire from Iran’s president and, in the same breath, threatened to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages” if Tehran does not allow ships to resume passing freely through the Strait of Hormuz.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said “Iran’s New Regime President” — who he described as “much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors” — had asked for a “ceasefire” from the U.S.

“We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages,” he added.

Trump, in a new interview ahead of his primetime address on the Iran war Wednesday night, went after the U.S.’s NATO allies.

“I’ll be discussing my disgust with NATO,” he told Reuters of the speech. Asked if he was thinking about pulling out of NATO, he said: “Oh, absolutely without question. Wouldn’t you do that if you were me?”

The identity of the new Iranian leader to whom Trump was referring was not entirely clear. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has served in that role since 2024, and Tehran has denied reports that he was killed in the joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes that began over a month ago.

While Trump has frequently claimed to be in contact with unidentified Iranian leaders in recent days, Tehran has denied engaging in negotiations with Washington. Iranian state television reported on Wednesday that the country’s foreign ministry had called Trump’s claim of a ceasefire request “false and baseless.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that there have been some indirect messages exchanged through third-country intermediaries and said he continues to hear from Trump’s roving peace envoy, Steve Witkoff.

But Araghchi strongly denied that those contacts represent “negotiations” of any kind.

“I receive messages from [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.

“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies.”

The Iranian official also said the “trust level is at zero” between Washington and Tehran after two rounds of diplomacy with Witkoff over the last year, each of which ended with U.S. airstrikes on Iranian targets.

“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results … we don’t see honesty,” he added.

Trump’s unverified claim to have received and rejected a call for a ceasefire comes just hours before the U.S. president is due to deliver a primetime address on the war after having failed to rally an international force capable of re-opening and guaranteeing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

The narrow waterway between Iran and Oman is a key choke point for roughly one fifth of the world’s energy supply. It has become the focal point in the war Trump launched last month ever since Iran began attacking cargo ships in the strait after declaring that it was closed to any maritime traffic associated with the U.S. or Israel.

The president’s post about a purported ceasefire request from Iran also came at 8:44 am ET, 45 minutes before financial markets were to open in the United States.

Global financial markets have been roiled by the month-old air war in large part due to Iran’s effective control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Although Trump promised that American naval vessels would escort ships through the key waterway early on in the conflict, he never delivered on that promise and has instead repeatedly badgered America’s European allies to contribute naval support for an operation to reopen the strait to maritime traffic.

While multiple American allies, including the U.K. and France, have expressed interest in a multinational force to guarantee freedom of navigation, European leaders — including British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — have stressed that no such operations could begin until after the U.S. and Israel end their war.

In response, Trump has repeatedly blasted NATO members for not joining in the war effort even though he made no attempt to rally international support before commencing the airstrikes.

He also has attacked the 32-member alliance as a “paper tiger” and claimed the failure of NATO members to obey his demands shows the alliance to be one-sided even though the only time it has invoked the North Atlantic Treaty’s mutual defense provision was to defend the United States after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

On Wednesday, Trump told The Telegraph that taking the US out of the alliance was now “beyond reconsideration”.

He also said he’d use his remarks on Wednesday evening to express “disgust” with the alliance and said he was “absolutely” considering whether to withdraw from NATO despite clear U.S. law banning the president from doing so without approval from Congress.

In separate comments to Reuters, he claimed the US has “some more targets left” before the war can end and claimed Iran “won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now.”

“And then I’ll leave, and I’ll take everybody with me, and if we have to we’ll come back to do spot hits,” he said.

He added that he “does not care about nuclear material” and that the US would be out of Iran “pretty quickly” signaling that the country would be wrapping up its military operations in the region soon, contrary to reports of a ground invasion.