Donald Trump
Donald TrumpReuters

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he’d be willing to provide Iran with coronavirus aid, such as ventilators, “if they ask for it.”

“If Iran needed aid on this, I would be willing to do something, if they want it, if they ask for it,” Trump said at his daily press briefing, according to The Hill.

“They were hit very hard,” he added, saying the country’s reported numbers “obviously … weren’t correct numbers.”

Iran has reported a confirmed 82,211 cases of coronavirus in the country, leading to 5,118 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran after Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, but it has offered Iran assistance in dealing with COVID-19.

Iran has ripped the US for continuing to impose sanctions on the country as it is deals with the coronavirus.

President Hassan Rouhani made clear recently that Iran had no intention of accepting the United States’ offer of humanitarian assistance and added that United States should lift sanctions if it wants to help Iran to contain the virus.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month that the United States may consider easing sanctions on Iran and other nations to help fight the coronavirus epidemic though he gave no concrete sign it plans to do so.

In his remarks on Sunday, Trump also suggested that Iranian leaders should “be smart and make a deal” with the US, though he added that Iran might be waiting to see if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden will become president in the 2020 election because “they’d own America.”

“You wouldn’t have a country left if he got in,” he added.