“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum… They are sick people. They are led by sick people. And they are vicious violent people.” With those words, President Donald Trump effectively declared the June memorandum of understanding with Iran finished, signaling a return to military pressure after nearly 3 weeks of uneasy calm.

Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump defended overnight U.S. strikes on Iranian military targets, saying the Islamic regime had squandered the opportunity created by the agreement. “We attacked, very powerfully last night, the very dangerous people from Iran. There’s something wrong with them. We say, ‘Go and do your funeral stuff,’ and instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships yesterday. So we hit them very hard last night.” According to U.S. officials, American forces struck more than 80 targets across southern Iran, including IRGC naval facilities, coastal missile batteries, radar sites, air defense systems, drone infrastructure, and command positions linked to operations around the Strait of Hormuz. The strikes followed reported Iranian attacks on 3 commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway, including tankers linked to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The military operation was accompanied by a major economic shift.

The U.S. Treasury revoked General License X, the sanctions waiver issued after the June memorandum that temporarily allowed transactions involving Iranian crude oil, petrochemicals, shipping, insurance, and related financial services. The administration replaced it with a new license ending those broad relief measures, restoring much of the sanctions pressure that had been lifted as part of the agreement.

The memorandum, signed in June following weeks of fighting between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, was never intended to be a final peace agreement. Instead, it created a temporary framework aimed at stopping direct military operations, reopening commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, providing limited sanctions relief, and giving negotiators 60 days to pursue a broader settlement.

Even when announcing the agreement, Trump warned that it depended entirely on Iranian behavior. “If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs,” he said after the memorandum was signed.

For 19 days, the agreement appeared to hold. Commercial shipping resumed, sanctions relief began taking effect, and negotiators continued working toward a longer term deal. That changed after the funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader. Within days, commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz again came under attack, prompting a large scale U.S. military response and the immediate rollback of sanctions relief.

Trump argued that Iran had broken the understanding first.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They are liars… There’s something wrong with them. They are cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” He went even further, describing the Islamic regime as “evil” and “cancer,” while repeating that the United States would continue responding militarily if attacked. “I told them, every time you hit, we hit. And of course, they’re dirty players.” Although Trump said negotiators such as Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner remain free to continue discussions, he made clear that any future agreement would ultimately depend on his approval.

His comments leave little doubt about the current direction of U.S. policy. The military strikes have resumed. The sanctions relief that formed the economic foundation of the June memorandum has been withdrawn. And the agreement that briefly paused the conflict has, in Trump’s own words, become “over.” Whether diplomacy can be revived now depends on decisions made in the coming days. For the moment, however, the United States has shifted back to a strategy of military deterrence and economic pressure, bringing the brief diplomatic opening with the Islamic regime to an abrupt end.