June 18, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended the interim deal with Iran at a G7 summit in France, saying a prolongedwar in the Middle East could have caused an economic catastrophe.
"I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened," Trump told reporters in the lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains.
The Republican president said he did not want to be like Herbert Hoover, who was US president in October 1929 when the stock market crashed, triggering what became known as the Great Depression.
"All I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship," Trump said. "Every time we said something negative, like, guess what, we're not going to be able to settle, it would go down very big."
