Trump says U.S. open to talks with Iran but downplays urgency of nuclear deal
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States and Iran plan to hold talks next week, just days after U.S. forces bombed three major Iranian nuclear facilities and following the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran.
It is unclear what form the discussions will take, who will participate and what the exact scope will be. Mr. Trump did not provide any additional details, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment, News.Az reports citing The New York Times.
But Mr. Trump seemed to downplay the importance of a diplomatic agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program, expressing complete confidence that Iran will not pursue a nuclear weapon after the U.S. attacks.
“We may sign an agreement,” he said at a news conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit. “I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary. I mean they had a war they fought. Now they’re going back to their world. I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States was seeking direct talks between the countries.
“We’d love to have peaceful relations with any country in the world, and so obviously that will depend on Iran’s willingness not just to engage in peace, but to negotiate directly with the United States, not through some third-country or fourth-country process,” Mr. Rubio said.
Before the United States attacked Iran, the two countries were engaged in diplomatic efforts over limiting Iran’s nuclear program after Mr. Trump withdrew from a previous agreement that had been negotiated during the Obama administration.
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Oman, which acted as a mediator in the talks that began in April, had been working with Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, as part of those negotiations. Iran had rejected an American proposal, which would have seen Tehran join a consortium with the United States and Arab nations to produce nuclear fuel for power plants. But under that proposal, Iran would be barred from doing any production inside its territory.
On Wednesday, administration officials repeatedly made the case that the American strikes had crippled Iran’s nuclear program, disputing the conclusions of a preliminary U.S. defense intelligence assessment.
Mr. Trump suggested that the U.S. strikes brought aboutthe end of the conflict between Iran and Israel, comparing it to the Americans’ dropping two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.
“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima,” he said. “I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war. If we didn’t take that out, they would have been, they’d be fighting right now.”
Similar news
