Mike Johnson, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has suggested that lying is part of Iranians’ religion as he defended President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a war on Iran.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Johnson was asked about the increasingly unpopular policies under the Republican president, including his decision to join Israel in launching a war against Iran in February.
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The House speaker responded by praising Trump, saying the US president has “steady hands at the wheel”. After addressing the US trade war with Canada, he turned his attention to the Iran war.
“The problem has been – and the reason we’ve been frustrated – is that the Iranians simply cannot be trusted. They’ll sit at a negotiation table and say something. They’ll walk away and do the opposite,” Johnson said.
“For some of them, it’s, you know, apparently part of their religion that they can just lie to someone they disagree with, so that’s been a difficult thing.”
Lying is strictly forbidden in Islam. Johnson’s office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by time of publication.
The war in Iran has been unpopular with the US public. On Monday, a nationwide University of Massachusetts poll suggested that ۵۴ percent of Americans disapprove of US military actions against Iran.
The conflict is expected to hurt Republicans’ chances of retaining control of the House and the Senate in November’s midterm elections.
The conflict saw Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil and gas prices soaring both in the US and around the globe.
But the Trump administration and its allies have repeatedly argued that the war was necessary to address an “imminent” nuclear threat from Tehran.
In Tuesday’s news conference, Johnson returned to that argument, saying that the war was “necessitated” because Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
That argument, however, has been undermined by statements from within the US government.
In June last year, for instance, Trump’s then-intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, told lawmakers that Iran was not weaponising its nuclear programme.
“The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in ۲۰۲۳,” Gabbard said at the time.
Within days of her remarks, on June ۲۲, ۲۰۲۵, the US military bombed Iran’s three main enrichment facilities, an attack Trump repeatedly said had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.
The US and Israel attacked Iran again late in February, sparking an all-out regional war that Trump had promised would last six weeks at most.
But the conflict entered its seventh month last week with no end in sight.
Although US officials have said that Washington has loosened Tehran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz and succeeded in getting millions of barrels of oil through the waterway daily, American consumers are still paying high prices for petrol.
The increased energy costs have also fuelled overall inflation in the US economy.
But Johnson argued that Washington’s allies will get involved in the conflict to help reopen the strait, something they have refused to do so far.
“Right now, the Strait of Hormuz – we have to have stability there for commerce, and in the Red Sea and in the region,” he said.
“Other countries around the world, our NATO allies, the Arab states in the region – they have a bigger stake in that than Americans do. And I think they’re willing to assist in that regard to make sure that commerce stays open, so we have stability in the markets.”
