The president Donald Trump published a formal demand for financial compensation from Iran on Truth Social this Monday for all the people killed and severely injured in conflicts attributed to Tehran over the decades.
The president thus shifts the demand for reparations that Iranian representatives had raised during the negotiations to end the five-month military conflict.
The publication was a direct response to Iranian demands. Days earlier, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, had conditioned the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on the payment of war reparations, the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the region, and the lifting of sanctions. Tehran estimated its losses at 270 billion dollars, according to reports from Al Jazeera and The Wall Street Journal.
Trump acknowledged that the idea seemed "interesting" to him, but he turned it around: "Now I also demand compensation from Iran for all the people they have killed and seriously injured with their bombs on roads and in many conflicts, for which they are well-known, initially led by General Soleimani, including the families of those who died in the USS Cole and thousands more fallen in combat."
The official also demanded compensation for the families of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who, he stated, Iran has killed in the last fifty years, and he specifically mentioned the 52,000 victims he attributed to the Iranian side during the five months of conflict, a figure that has not been independently verified.
Trump linked the operations of armed militias with bombs on roads to the figure of General Qassem Soleimani, who was eliminated in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Among the noted cases is the attack on the USS Cole, which occurred in October 2000 in the port of Aden, Yemen, costing the lives of 17 U.S. sailors.
"I have instructed my representatives to firmly incorporate this into any and all future negotiations," wrote Trump, closing his message with his usual signature: "President DONALD J. TRUMP."
The armed conflict between Washington and Tehran began on February 28, 2026, with Operation Epic Fury, a joint U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iranian nuclear and military facilities, prompted by Tehran's refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Since then, the confrontation has alternated between intensive bombings, tactical pauses, and indirect negotiations via intermediaries such as Oman and Pakistan.
The conversations have been particularly tortuous: Iran suspended negotiations on June 1, citing Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Trump dismissed a nuclear agreement on July 23, accusing Tehran of bad faith, and on July 30 launched a new air offensive against the Persian country.
The demand for compensations published this Monday represents a new rhetorical escalation in the negotiation landscape: it transforms the Iranian argument into a counterclaim that encompasses decades of violent actions attributed to Tehran, which Trump has ordered to be included in all future negotiation rounds. Iran has demanded the military withdrawal of the U.S. and payment of reparations as a prerequisite for any agreement regarding the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime route through which approximately 20% of the world's oil passes.
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