US President Donald Trump on Wednesday turned one of the Iranian regime’s most notorious metaphors back against its own leadership, describing those ruling Tehran as a “cancer” that must be cut out.
Speaking to reporters alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump said he saw little value in continuing negotiations with Iran following a renewed wave of US military strikes.
“To me, I think it’s over,” Trump said when asked whether the strikes marked the end of the memorandum of understanding signed with Tehran. “I don’t want to deal with them.”
“They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people,” he continued, adding that Iran’s leaders could not be trusted with a nuclear weapon.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”
Pres. Trump on ceasefire with Iran: “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people. It’s just waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars. They’re something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo!” pic.twitter.com/7jpw7NWB6x
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 8, 2026
The interim ceasefire agreement, mediated by Pakistan, had been intended to create a 60-day window for negotiations toward a permanent settlement. But indirect talks in Qatar produced no visible breakthrough, while renewed Iranian actions in the Strait of Hormuz further strained the already fragile arrangement.
The United States responded Tuesday with a new round of military strikes and revoked a license that had temporarily allowed Iran to sell crude oil and petroleum products.
Trump said the regime’s negotiating conduct had convinced him that further diplomacy was futile. According to the president, agreements would be reached privately, only for Iranian officials to publicly deny that they had accepted anything.
His frustration also appeared to revive his anger over alleged Iranian plots to assassinate him.
“They want to take me out. I’m on every list,” Trump said. “These are evil, sick people. They’re a cancer—and you know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early.”
Trump on the Islamic Regime:
“These are evil, sick people, and we have to rid their cancer. They’re CANCER! And you know what you do? You got to cut out cancer EARLY, man that’s the way I feel”
Come on. Let’s go. pic.twitter.com/T6hzQpVZPc
— Kosher (@koshercockney) July 8, 2026
The choice of language carried particular significance.
For years, Iran’s supreme leadership used almost precisely the same imagery against Israel, repeatedly calling the Jewish state a “cancerous tumor” that must be removed, uprooted, or destroyed.
On Wednesday, that rhetoric was returned to its source.
The regime that spent decades depicting Israel as a disease was now being described by the American president in the same terms—not because of its ethnicity or its population, but because of the ideology and leadership that pursued nuclear weapons, threatened neighboring states, and treated diplomacy as another instrument of confrontation.
Trump’s remarks suggested that Washington’s patience with that strategy may finally have run out.
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