WHITE HOUSE \u2014\u00a0U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to signal that he is ready to take military action on Iran, unless the country agrees to a new deal that would restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear program. \u201cThere’ll be some interesting days ahead. That\u2019s all I can tell you,\u201d he told reporters in the Oval Office Friday. Trump announced during a Fox Business News interview recorded Thursday night and aired Friday morning that he had sent a letter to Ali Khamenei, telling the Iranian supreme leader that it will be \u201ca lot better for Iran\u201d if they are willing to negotiate a nuclear deal. \u201cIf we have to go in militarily, it\u2019s going to be a terrible thing for them,\u201d he said during the interview. Trump said the U.S. is \u201cdown to final strokes with Iran,\u201d and signaled he has his sights on the country\u2019s \u201cnice oil wells.\u201d \u201cWe have a situation with Iran that something’s going to happen very soon, very, very soon,\u201d he said. \u201cI’m just saying I’d rather see a peace deal than the other, but the other will solve the problem.\u201d The deal Trump is referring to would replace the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran. The JCPOA is a signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. In 2018, during in his first term in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal. Details of Trump\u2019s new Iran deal are unclear. The White House has not responded to VOA\u2019s request to provide the letter or further describe its contents. The Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations said there has been no confirmation from Khamenei\u2019s office that any letter had been received. \u201cWe have not received such a letter so far,\u201d the mission said in a statement sent to VOA Friday. Commenting on Trump\u2019s letter, Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general, said, \u201cAs a matter of principle, we reaffirm that diplomacy remains the best way to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran\u2019s nuclear programme. \u201cIn that regard, we welcome all diplomatic efforts towards that goal,\u201d he said in a statement Friday. Brinkmanship Trump is engaging in a \u201cclassic case of brinkmanship,\u201d said Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow with The Washington Institute. \u201cHe’s trying to raise the stakes with Iran, to compel its leadership to do deals with him.\u201d Early steps that Trump could take might include interdicting Iranian oil tankers to disrupt the country\u2019s remaining lifeline amid crippling sanctions, but that could escalate the situation and trigger an Iranian tit-for-tat response, Nadimi told VOA. \u201cI don’t think at this moment the U.S. government is thinking it wants to bomb Iranian oil installations,\u201d he added. \u201cInitially, I think every focus will be on Iranian air defenses, long-range missile capabilities and the nuclear sites.\u201d On Thursday, Israel’s military said it performed a joint air force exercise with the U.S. this week involving Israeli F-15I and F-35I fighter jets flying alongside a U.S. B-52 bomber, in an apparent message to Iran. Israel said the exercise aims to practice \u201coperational coordination between the two militaries to enhance their ability to address various regional threats.\u201d Trump campaigned on renewing \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on Iran, saying that his administration will not tolerate Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon or their support of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world. During his first term, Trump ordered the 2020 airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful military commander, Qassem Soleimani. However, it\u2019s unclear why he is ramping up pressure on Tehran now, amid other rapid developments on Washington\u2019s positions in various conflicts, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, said Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cThis was bound to be a much more aggressive policy than what we’ve seen,\u201d Jones told VOA. \u201cBut I don’t know if there’s a clear strategy going forward.\u201d No negotiations under sanctions Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the prospect of nuclear negotiations with the U.S. while Tehran remains under heavy sanctions from Washington. \u201cWe will not enter any direct negotiations with the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats,\u201d Araghchi said in an interview with AFP on Friday. He added that Tehran is speaking with \u201cthree European countries,\u201d along with \u201cRussia and China, [and] other members of the JCPOA.\u201d Trump has spoken more broadly about his desire to eliminate their nuclear weapons, signaling he wants to negotiate denuclearization efforts with China and Russia as well. \u201cIt would great if everybody would get rid of their nuclear weapons,\u201d he told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday. VOA’s Michael Lipin and Margaret Besheer\u00a0contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHITE HOUSE \u2014\u00a0U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to signal that he is ready to take military action on Iran, unless the country agrees to a new deal that would restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear program. \u201cThere’ll be some interesting days ahead. That\u2019s all I can tell you,\u201d he told reporters in the Oval […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":29600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}