U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that Washington is in touch with a “top person” in Iran, but asked if it was the very top, he said, “No. Not the supreme leader.”
“Don’t forget, we’ve wiped out the leadership, phase one, phase two and largely phase three,” Trump said, per the pool report. “But we’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader.”
Asked about Iran denying that there are talks, Trump told reporters that “they have to get themselves better on public relations people.”
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead,” he told reporters. “We have points of major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces. They’re unable to talk to each other, but we’ve had very strong talks.”
The Iranians “want very much to make a deal. We’d like to make a deal too,” the president said, per the pool. “We’re going to get together today by probably phone, because it’s very hard to find a country. It’s very hard for them to get out, I guess. But we’ll, at some point, very, very soon, meet.”
“We’re doing a five day period. We’ll see how that goes, and if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.”
Asked if the Jewish state would go along with a negotiated ceasefire, Trump said that he thinks “Israel be will be very happy with what we have.”
“We just spoke to Israel a little while ago. I think they’ll be very happy. This will be peace for Israel, long term peace, guaranteed peace if this happens, and you know, I can’t guarantee it, but I think it’s going to my life is a deal that’s all I do is deals my own life,” he said. “I think this is something that’s going to happen. And why wouldn’t it happen? So tomorrow morning, sometime their time, we were expected to blow up their largest electric generating plants that cost over $10 billion to build. It’s a very good one. There was no dearth of money, and one shot is gone, it collapses.”
“Why would they want that? So they call, I didn’t call. They called. They want to make a deal, and we are very willing to make a deal,” Trump said, per the pool. “It’s gonna be a good deal, and it’s gotta be no more wars, no more nuclear weapons. They’re not going to have nuclear weapons anymore.”
