U.S. President Donald Trump on May 14 talked up hopes of a nuclear deal with Iran, saying his administration is in “very serious negotiations” on a long-term peace agreement.
Speaking to reporters in Doha, the capital of Qatar, Trump said, “Iran has sort of agreed to the terms” and added, “we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal.”
Negotiators from the United States and Iran have held four rounds of talks since early April, primarily focused on Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump began the first foreign trip of his second administration on May 13, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
On May 13, during a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Trump said Iran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
That led to an angry rebuke from Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who said Tehran would not “bow to any bully.”
Speaking on Iranian state TV, Pezeshkian said of Trump: “He thinks he can come here, chant slogans, and scare us. For us, martyrdom is far sweeter than dying in bed. You came to frighten us? We will not bow to any bully.”
But on May 14, Trump suggested the negotiations with Iran on the nuclear program were going well.
He told reporters: “You probably read today Iran has sort of agreed to the terms ... They’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran.”
Goldston suggested Iran could be allowed to enrich uranium up to 5 percent content of U-235, not the current level of 60 percent.
Trump: ‘It’s Very Simple’
Trump said he wanted Iran to succeed, adding: “I want them to end up being a great country, frankly, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon. That’s the only thing. It’s very simple.”“It’s not like I have to give you 30 pages’ worth of details. There’s only one sentence: They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
But Trump added: “I think we are getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this. There’s two steps. There’s a very, very nice step, and there’s a violent step.”
He said he did not want to have to resort to violence with Iran but said: “Some people do, many people do. I don’t want to do that step.”
Trump said, “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace, and if we do that, it'll be fantastic.”
The president said: “We'd like to see if we could solve the Iran problem in an intelligent way, as opposed to a brutal way. There’s only two, intelligent and brutal, those are the two alternatives.”
Referring to Qatar, which is located only 120 miles from Iran across the Persian Gulf, he said, “Other countries are much further away, so probably not quite the same level of danger, but we are going to protect this country, this very special place with a special royal family.”
He said the Qatari royal family were “great people” and said, “They’re protected by the United States of America.”
