U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday apparently turned down Tehran’s request to pressure Israel into ending its kinetic war with Iran.
“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now,” the president told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey, before heading to his Bedminster golf resort for a fundraising event.
“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” said Trump, referring to the prospect of resuming negotiations with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.
The American leader was asked about the two weeks’ notice he gave on June 19 with regard to making a decision about joining the war or not, to which he said that was “just the time to see whether or not people come to their senses.”
He continued, “It’s very hard to stop when you look at it—Israel’s doing well in terms of war, and I think you would say that Iran is doing less well.”
Trump further remarked that the Iranians do not wish to discuss the war with Europe. “They want to speak with us; Europe is not going to be able to help in this,” he said.
With voices within the Republican Party strongly opposing U.S. intervention in a Middle East war after two decades of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump said that as a civilian at the time, he warned against “going in.”
But he went on to say that Iran has accumulated a “tremendous amount of material” for a nuclear weapon, “and I think within a matter of weeks or certainly within a matter of months, they were going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let that happen.”
When pressed about U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s alleged statement that there was no evidence that Iran was so close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Trump said that “she’s wrong.”
Shortly afterward, Gabbard tweeted that the “dishonest media” was taking her March testimony about Iran before Congress out of context.
The media is “spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division,” she wrote.
“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
Direct talks between the U.S. and Iran have not broken off since Israel launched its preemptive strike on the Islamic Republic last week, Reuters reported on Thursday.
U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken several times by phone, in an attempt to de-escalate the aerial war, Reuters cited three diplomats as saying.
The Iranian diplomat maintained that Tehran will not return to the negotiating table with regard to its nuclear program unless Jerusalem halts its attacks.
Araqchi, according to one of the unnamed diplomats, told Witkoff that Tehran “could show flexibility in the nuclear issue” if the Trump administration pressured Israel to end the war.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli told JNS on Thursday that the White House will make its own decision about whether to enter the war against Iran, and Israel will not pressure the Trump administration to do so.
“The United States has an excellent president who knows exactly what is in the best interest of his country,” Chikli said. “We don’t make decisions for them.”
“But it’s no secret that Iran is the enemy of the United States,” he continued. “At every conference and parade of this regime, they shout, ‘Death to America, Death to Israel.’”