President Donald Trump said Monday that the US and Iran were having direct talks on a nuclear deal as he sat alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Trump said a “very high level” meeting would take place on Saturday in Oman. “We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen. And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with Netanyahu.
But the US president warned that if the talks were not successful, “I think Iran will be in great danger.”
Trump has said he would prefer a deal over Iran’s nuclear program to a military confrontation and he said on March 7 he had written to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to suggest talks. Iranian officials said at the time that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations.
During his 2017-2021 term, Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions.
Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.
Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy program.
Tehran says its nuclear program is wholly for civilian energy purposes.
Like US presidents before him, Trump has said that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for details.
The shift comes at a precarious time for Tehran’s regional “Axis of Resistance” which it has established at great cost over decades to oppose Israel and US influence. The axis has been severely weakened since Palestinian group Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, tipped the Middle East into conflict.
Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been hammered by Israel since the Gaza war began while the Houthi movement in Yemen has been targeted by US airstrikes since last month. Israel severely damaged Iran’s air defenses last year.
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, another key Iranian ally, has further weakened the Islamic Republic’s influence.
