U.S. President Donald Trump warned Sunday that “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!” unless Afghanistan “gives back” Bagram Air Base, also telling reporters the U.S. wants it “right away” and linking its value to proximity to western China.

Washington’s pressure tactic met a firm wall of resistance from Kabul. Taliban officials dismissed any prospect of a U.S. military return. “It is not possible to negotiate over even one inch of Afghanistan’s soil,” said Chief of Staff Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat Sunday.

On the same day, Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoub Mujahid invoked the Doha Agreement: “America pledged … not to force or threats against Afghanistan’s sovereignty.” He recalled that when Washington sought to keep bases in 2021, “We told them that if you stay, we’re ready to fight for another 20 years. So, they left.”

Additionally, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi underscored Kabul’s uncompromising stance in an interview, declaring that even full U.S. recognition and reconstruction aid would not persuade Afghanistan to cede territory.

He questioned why, if such concessions were possible, the Taliban would have endured decades of war, the loss of leaders, and the sacrifice of “so many martyrs.” The struggle, he said, was precisely to ensure that no foreign power could ever claim Afghan soil.

According to CNN, the U.S. president has been pressing his national security advisers to explore ways of regaining control of Bagram Air Base since March.

Although Trump implied in his post that the United States had built the facility, Bagram was originally constructed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Decades later, after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the base was transformed into Washington’s largest military hub in the country.

The air base soon became notorious for mass detentions, torture, and the machinery of occupation, before its fall to the Taliban during the 2021 withdrawal.