“We have scheduled Iran talks. They want to talk. They took a big drubbing,” Trump said while hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for dinner at the White House, adding that Iran’s nuclear sites, particularly the Fordow plant, were “obliterated.”
Washington on June 24 brokered a ceasefire to the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later declared victory, claiming that Trump had exaggerated the destruction caused by US military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
The conflict began on June 13 when Israel carried out surprise strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military sites, killing top military commanders and nuclear scientists. Iran retaliated, firing missiles and drones at Israel.
The US then got directly involved with a military operation that targeted Iran’s main nuclear sites, including Fordow, which houses the country’s most advanced centrifuges.
Israel’s attack came two days before Tehran and Washington were set to meet for a sixth round of indirect nuclear talks in Oman, negotiated between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
“They want to meet, they want to work something out. They are very different now than they were two weeks ago,” Trump said. “I think they have gained a lot of respect for us. I think they have gained a lot of respect for Israel also.”
At the dinner table in the White House, Witkoff said that talks will resume “in the next week or so.”
Trump also said that he would be willing to relieve Iran of crippling sanctions “at the right time.”
“We have biting sanctions, they are very biting sanctions, and I would love to, at the right time, take those sanctions off, give them a chance at rebuilding, because I’d like to see Iran build itself back up in a peaceful manner and not going around saying ‘death to America … death to Israel’ as they have been doing,” he said.
“They were the bully of the Middle East, and now they are not the bully anymore,” the US president asserted.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused Israel of attempting to assassinate him and derailing nuclear talks with Washington. “They did try, yes, and they acted accordingly, but they failed,” he told American conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
“We were going to have the next round of the talks [on June 15], but suddenly, Israel torpedoed the negotiating table,” Pezeshkian added, accusing Israel of “destroying diplomacy.”
Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers - formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - Iran agreed to curb its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for much-needed relief from crippling sanctions.
But the deal began unraveling in 2018 when Washington, under Trump’s first term, unilaterally withdrew from the accord and reimposed biting sanctions on the Islamic republic, which in turn began rolling back on its nuclear commitments.
Pezeshkian dismissed accusations that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. “The truth is that we have never been after developing a nuclear bomb. Not in the past, not presently, or in the future.”
