1987 Video of Trump Calling Iran the ‘Real Culprit’ and Urging Seizure of Its Oil Resurfaces | WATCH
Abrahms: “Trump was always an Iran hawk. Here’s a video of him from 1987 describing what he’s trying to do in 2026. As you watch think about how his consistency going back decades before he became a politician crushes the claim that Netanyahu has coerced him today.”
A nearly 40-year-old video of (now President) Donald Trump aggressively targeting Iran has gone viral on X after being posted by international security analyst Max Abrahms, who argues it proves the president’s current hardline policy is consistent with views he has held long before entering politics.
In a clip shared Sunday night, a 41-year-old Trump is shown first speaking at a public event and then in a studio interview. He declares he is “personally tired of seeing this great country of ours being ripped off” and states flatly: “The real culprit is Iran.”
When an interviewer asks whether the U.S. could “go in and take over some of their oil which is along the sea,” Trump replies without hesitation: “Let them have Iran, you’d take their oil.”
In the studio portion he continues: “Next time Iran attacks this country… go and grab one of their big oil installations… Grab them and keep it. Get back your losses. Because this country has lost plenty because of Iran.”
The video has gone viral.
Abrahms followed up in a reply: “Groypers now say that Trump betrayed them only because they were too stupid to understand him.”
The resurfaced footage comes one day after President Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One, claimed fresh U.S. strikes had left the Iranian Navy “gone,” its Air Force “hit hard,” and asserted that “regime change” had effectively taken place in Tehran — with the original “really evil” leadership “mostly dead” and a more “reasonable” group now in charge.
Critics of the current military campaign have repeatedly accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pushing Trump into escalation. Abrahms’ post is clearly aimed at rebutting that narrative by showing Trump’s Iran posture predates his political career by decades.
The 1987 remarks echo earlier comments Trump made in the late 1980s about striking Iranian oil facilities in response to attacks on U.S. interests — positions that have circulated online during previous periods of U.S.-Iran tension but gained fresh relevance amid the ongoing “Operation Epic Fury” campaign.