Donald Trump has said Iran is “talking to” the US and hinted at a deal to avoid the use of military strikes.
“[Iran is] talking to us, and we’ll see if we can do something, otherwise we’ll see what happens … We have a big fleet heading out there,” he told Fox News. “They are negotiating.”
Trump added that US allies in the region were not being told of plans for possible strikes due to security reasons. He has threatened to intervene in Iran in the wake of a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
“Well, we can’t tell them the plan. If I told them the plan, it would be almost as bad as telling you the plan – it could be worse, actually,” he said.
Washington has deployed a naval battle group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off Iran’s shores, after Trump threatened to intervene in response to a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
In remarks made later on Saturday, Trump declined to say whether he’d made a decision on what he wanted to do regarding Iran.
Speaking to reporters as he flew to Florida, Trump sidestepped a question about whether Tehran would be emboldened if the US backed away from launching any strikes on Iran, saying: “Some people think that. Some people don’t.”
Trump said Iran should negotiate a “satisfactory” deal to prevent the country from getting any nuclear weapons but said: “I don’t know that they will. But they are talking to us. Seriously talking to us.”
Qatar in a statement said premier Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Tehran on Saturday and met with Larijani about “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.
Washington has deployed a naval battle group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off Iran’s shores, after Trump threatened to intervene in the wake of a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
The arrival of the flotilla has raised fears of a direct confrontation with Iran, which has warned it would respond with missile strikes on US bases, ships and allies – notably Israel – in the event of an attack.
But Trump has said he believes Iran will prefer to make a deal over its nuclear and missile programmes rather than face US military action – and Tehran has said it is ready for nuclear talks if its missiles and defence capabilities are not on the agenda.
“Contrary to the hype of the contrived media war, structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing,” said Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s supreme national security council, a day after the Kremlin said Larijani held talks in Moscow with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on Saturday said a broader conflict would hurt both Iran and the US.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought, and in no way seeks, war and it is firmly convinced that a war would be in the interest of neither Iran, nor the United States, nor the region,” he said in a call with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, according to the Iranian presidency.
Iran’s army chief, Amir Hatami, had earlier warned the US and Israel against any attack, saying his forces were “at full defensive and military readiness” to respond.
“If the enemy makes a mistake, without a doubt it will endanger its own security, the security of the region, and the security of the Zionist regime,” Hatami said, according to the official news agency IRNA.
He said Iran’s nuclear technology and expertise “cannot be eliminated”.
With tensions heightened, Iranian authorities rushed to deny that several incidents on Saturday were linked to any attack or sabotage, including an explosion in the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas that local firefighters said was caused by a gas leak.
On Friday, US Central Command said the Revolutionary Guards would conduct “a two-day live-fire naval exercise” in the strait of Hormuz, a key transit hub for global energy supplies.
In a statement, US Central Command warned Iran against “any unsafe and unprofessional behaviour near US forces”.
It drew criticism from Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.
“Operating off our shores, the US military is now attempting to dictate how our Powerful Armed Forces should conduct target practice in their own turf,” he wrote on X.
The US designated the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation in 2019, a move the EU followed on Thursday.
In response to that development, the speaker of Iran’s parliament on Sunday said the Islamic Republic now considers all EU militaries to be terrorist groups.
“By trying to hit the Revolutionary Guards … the Europeans actually shot themselves in the foot and once again made a decision against the interests of their people by blindly obeying the Americans,” Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said.
Qalibaf added that the national security parliamentary commission would deliberate on the expulsion of EU countries’ military attaches and follow up on the issue with the foreign ministry.
With Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press
