Trump Says Negotiators ‘Getting Close’ to Possible Nuclear Deal With Iran

The president said he wanted Iran to be a great country but said, ‘They can’t have a nuclear weapon. ... It’s very simple.’

President Donald Trump gestures on stage as he tours the Al Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar on May 15, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump on May 14 talked up hopes of a nuclear deal with Iran, saying that 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 noted that the two sides are “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.

On May 11, U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi held three-hour-long talks in Muscat, the capital of Oman, which acted as a mediator in the U.S.–Iran nuclear negotiations.

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 that 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 Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

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 that 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.”

In February, Robert Goldston, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University who worked on robotic techniques to verify uranium enrichment plants, told The Epoch Times that “there may be a path forward for quite a new version of the Iran deal.”

Goldston suggested that Iran could be allowed to enrich uranium up to 5 percent content of U-235, not the current level of 60 percent.

But no details of what Witkoff and Araqchi have discussed have been released.

Trump: ‘It’s Very Simple’

Trump said he wanted Iran to succeed.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“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 that “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.

“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 that “they’re protected by the United States of America.”

On May 11, Trump announced that his administration would be receiving a plane from Qatar to be temporarily used as the new Air Force One while Boeing contends with continued delays on the jet it is contractually obligated to build for the Department of Defense.

“The Defense Department is getting a gift, free of charge, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.

President Donald Trump (L) and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani meet at the Amiri Diwan in Doha, Qatar, on May 14, 2025. Alex Brandon/AP

On Feb. 4, Trump reinstated the “maximum pressure” strategy of his first administration, which saw the United States withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and impose new economic sanctions against the country.

But the following day, the president posted on Truth Social, “I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper.”

On May 5, the U.S. House passed a bill maintaining sanctions on Iran, and on May 14. the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated as subject to sanctions several Iranian individuals and companies, along with a number of people and entities in China.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.