US President Donald Trump indicated during a Wednesday cabinet meeting that progress in talks with Iran on a deal to end the war had slowed, departing from his assertion at the start of the week that an agreement was nearly finalized.
Iran “wants to make a deal,” but the US is “not satisfied” yet with what it is seeing, Trump said at the White House, threatening that the US will “have to just finish the job” if talks fizzle out.
The president later suggested he may not sign a deal with Iran if neighboring Gulf countries do not normalize ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords.
“I’m not sure we should make the deal if they don’t… join the Abraham Accords,” Trump said, referring Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and others. He insisted they “owe it” to the US after Washington launched the war against Iran — a conflict that placed them in Tehran’s crosshairs for weeks.
Trump tied Iran talks with the Abraham Accords for the first time on Sunday, seemingly in a bid to secure diplomatic wins amid questionable results on the battlefield, with the Islamic Republic still in power and in control of missile and uranium stockpiles as well as the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi officials were quick to reiterate that Riyadh will only normalize ties with Israel if the latter agrees to establish an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state — something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to reject.
In Wednesday’s meeting, Trump took a step back from the bluster when asked if he would go as far as to specifically make the Iran deal contingent on countries normalizing ties with Israel.
“I’m not going to [tell] you what’s contingent, and what’s not,” he responded.
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