US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he planned to speak with Iran, even as the US dispatched another warship to the Middle East and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the military would be ready to carry out whatever the president decided.
Speaking to reporters, Trump did not elaborate on the nature or timing of any dialogue or say who from Washington would lead the negotiations.
"I am planning on it, yeah," Trump said when asked about possible discussions with Tehran. "We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now, and it would be great if we didn’t have to use them," Trump told reporters Thursday at the Kennedy Center.
Trump was attending the premiere of the "Melania" movie when he made the comments.
His statement follows a new US naval destroyer entering the Middle East, according to what a US official told Reuters on Thursday, as Iranian officials prepare for military confrontation with the US.
The USS Delbert D. Black entered the region sometime in the past 48 hours, bringing the number of destroyers in the Middle East to six, along with an aircraft carrier and three other littoral combat ships.
The destroyer anchored on Friday at the Port of Eilat. The IDF claimed that the ship's arrival was due to routine operations which had been planned beforehand, as part of the cooperation between the US military and the IDF.
The IRGC received a batch of 1,000 new drones while Iran prepares for a military confrontation, as Tehran believes that coming to an agreement that meets demands put forth by the US would be more costly than war, informed sources in Tehran told the Hezbollah-aligned Al-Akhbar on Thursday.
Trump stated that he had held talks with Iran in "recent days," Israel's public broadcaster KAN News reported on Friday morning.
"I have had talks with them, and I intend to hold talks," Trump was cited as saying.
"I told the Iranians two things - no nukes, and stop killing the protesters. They will have to do something," he affirmed.
The New York Times reported that Trump was weighing multiple options for military action against Iran, though his preference is to strike the Iranian leaders who threatened him personally. These included sending commando units to Iranian nuclear sites which had not already been destroyed, or launching attacks against Iran's military and leadership in order to cause upheaval, leaving a path for a new regime to take over.
The report also stated that Israel is pushing the US to join it in a widespread attack on Iranian ballistic missile capabilities.
The US's Middle East partners, including Turkey, Oman, and Qatar, are urging the Trump administration to divert from military options for strikes on Iran towards the possibility of brokering diplomatic talks, several regional officials told CBS News on Thursday.
The opportunity for direct diplomacy to discuss Tehran's nuclear program and ballistic missile capacity "has not gained traction," according to three regional officials who spoke to the outlet anonymously in order to talk freely.
Citi expects the US and Israel to take limited actions against Iran in the near term that avoid an escalatory response to push the country into a deal over its nuclear program, the bank said in a note on Thursday.
The smaller steps likely include limited US military actions and oil tanker seizures that are expected to keep the risk premium in oil markets elevated, especially over concerns Iran would shut the key Strait of Hormuz transit point, the bank said.
1 comment:
I like the way he framed it that the US prefers to not attack Iran. He does not want to. If he read the Bible he would know that what ever he does now likely won’t affect the eventual outcome anyway.
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