President Donald Trump threatened that bad things will happen if the Taliban do not allow the US to reestablish the Bagram Air Base. The Taliban said they would not allow the US to return to the military facility. 

On Friday, during a press conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump explained that the US made a mistake by withdrawing from the Bagram Air Base, and he would have kept the facility if he were president. However, Trump signed the agreement with the Taliban that led to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Trump says he is now working to establish the military facility. “We gave it to them for nothing. We’re trying to get it back, by the way. That could be a little breaking news, we’re trying to get it back because they need things from us.”

The President doubled down on the plan in a post on Truth Social. ”If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!” he wrote on Saturday. 

An Afghan government defence official said Sunday that a deal over Bagram air base was “not possible.” “Recently, some people have said that they have entered negotiations with Afghanistan for taking back Bagram air base,” Fasihuddin Fitrat, chief of staff of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence, explained. “A deal over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is not possible. We don’t need it.”

Trump said Bagram is in a strategic position near China’s nuclear weapons facility. “We want that base back but one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons,” he added.

The President did not say what he plans to do to restore America’s largest military facility of the two-decade long occupation of Afghanistan. “We won’t talk about that, but we’re talking now to Afghanistan, and we want it back and we want it back soon, right away. And if they don’t do it, you’re going to find out what I’m going to do,” he said.