WASHINGTON, March 2 — U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to resume nuclear negotiations with Iran’s new leadership.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump was quoted as saying by The Atlantic magazine in a phone interview. “They should have done it sooner.
They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” said Trump.
He did not specify whom he would speak with. Asked whether his conversation with the Iranian side would happen in two days, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that.”
He said that some of the previous Iranian negotiators were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone,” he said.
“That was a big hit,” he added, referring to the joint Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran starting on Saturday.
On whether he had any indication of renewed Iranian threats against the U.S. homeland since the start of the attack, Trump said, “I don’t want to tell you that.”
He also expects that the attack on Iran will not disrupt Republican efforts before mid-term elections in the United States to convince voters that his administration is focused on the U.S. economy, and that the attack’s effect on oil markets, which reopen Sunday night, would likely be less disruptive on American pocketbooks than some analysts had predicted.
On Sunday, Hours before Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was confirmed dead in U.S.-Israeli attacks on Saturday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that Iran is “certainly interested for de-escalation,” while describing Trump’s call for a regime change in Iran as a “mission impossible.” (Namibia Daily News/Xinhua)
