President Trump said he had sent a letter to the Iranian government trying to negotiate an agreement to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
He said the letter was sent on Wednesday and addressed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian supreme leader. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to provide the letter or further describe its content. The Iran mission to the United Nations declared on Friday that Iran had not received this letter to date.
In an interview that broadcast on Friday on Fox Business, Trump said: “There are two ways in which Iran can be managed: militarily or have an agreement. I would prefer to make an agreement, because I’m not trying to hurt Iran. They are fantastic people. “
The move is a sharp pin for Mr. Trump, who in 2018 withdrew the United States from a nuclear agreement with Iran, revealing a achievement of the foreign policy of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
In the interview, with the presenter of Fox Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Trump described his letter saying: “I hope to negotiate because it will be much better for Iran”.
“If we have to go militarily, it will be a terrible thing for them,” he said, adding: “The other alternative is that we have to do something, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon”.
Thursday, Trump spoke widerly than his desire to see the countries of the world eliminate their nuclear weapons. He said he also hoped to negotiate the efforts of denuclearization with China and Russia.
“It would be fantastic if everyone was getting out of their nuclear weapons,” he told journalists in the oval office.
In Iran, officials have strongly discussed whether to negotiate with Mr. Trump. The moderate and reformist factions, which hold the presidency, are in favor of the interviews, while the conservatives of the hard line oppose. The Iranian economy is in ruins due to international sanctions and bad management and President Masoud Pezeshkian was elected last year due to his commitments to improve the economy by negotiating directly with Washington.
But in the Iranian political system, Ayatollah Khamenei has the last word in all key state issues. He rejected the negotiations with the United States after Trump signed an executive order last month to enforce a maximum pressure policy on Iran, and repeatedly said Iran who cannot trust that the United States would honor its end of each deal.
On Friday, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, told Agence France-Presse that, “as long as the Trump administration maintains the maximum pressure policy, Iran does not negotiate with the United States on its nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear program cannot be destroyed with a military attack. We have reached technical knowledge and you cannot bomb the knowledge stored in the brain. “
Pezeshkian took a public distance from the positions of Mr. Khamenei in the United States. On Sunday, he told Parliament that he favored the negotiations but who had to respect the ban on Mr. Khamenei. It was an unusually frank recognition of the limits of the president’s power in the Iranian political system and an attempt to put the relapse of this decision – more sanctions, worsening of the economy, military strikes on nuclear sites – on Khamenei.
“My position has been and will remain that I believe in negotiations, but now we must follow the parameters established by the supreme leader,” said Pezeshkian.
Luke Broadwater reported by Washington e Farnaz Fassihi from New York.