- Trump says Iran wants deal as U.S. forces move closer.
- Iran says its defense program is non-negotiable.
- The build-up of the US military in ME adds to regional tensions.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump predicted Friday that Iran would seek to broker a deal rather than face U.S. military action, despite Tehran’s warning that its missile arsenal would never be up for discussion.
“I can say it, they want to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Asked if he had given Iran a deadline to begin negotiations on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Trump said “yes, I did” but refused to say what they were.
“We have a large armada, a flotilla, whatever you want to call it, that is heading toward Iran right now,” Trump said, referring to a group of U.S. naval aircraft carriers in the waters off Iran.
“I hope we reach an agreement. If we reach an agreement, that’s good. If we don’t reach an agreement, we’ll see what happens.”
Trump cited what he said was Iran’s decision to halt executions of protesters — after a crackdown in which rights groups say more than 6,000 people were killed — as evidence that Tehran was willing to negotiate.
Do the right thing
Washington’s allies in the region fear that any US strike against Iran could cause instability and economic chaos.
A senior Gulf official in contact with the Trump administration said the United States was very cautious about its plans.
“We hope that whatever happens, it will lead to stability. This result can be achieved if the Iranians do the right thing, and we hope that will happen,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s top security body – Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani – met with Tehran’s ally Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
No details of their discussions have been revealed, but Moscow has offered to mediate between Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s top diplomat said Friday his country’s defense and missile capabilities would “never” be on the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, in a post on US social media company
“The European Union certainly knows that, in accordance with a resolution of the Iranian parliament, the armies of the countries that participated in the recent EU decision against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will be considered terrorists,” Larijani said.
He added that “the consequences of such action will therefore fall on the European countries which took this measure”.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was “ready to start negotiations if they take place on an equal footing.”
But, he stressed, “Iran’s defensive and ballistic capabilities will never be the subject of negotiations,” adding that there were no plans to meet with American officials to resume negotiations.
Former IAEA chief denounces US threats
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, has condemned the escalation of US threats of military action against Iran.
In his article published Thursday on
“Continued unilateral threats of a military strike against #Iran in the absence of any clear and present danger and in violation of international law, recall the same grim scene before the illegal and immoral war in #Iraq with its lies and horrific consequences. Human life and regional destruction do not seem to matter. We never learn…” he tweeted.
US news site Axios reported this week that Washington officials said any deal would have to include a cap on Iran’s arsenal of long-range missiles, the withdrawal of enriched uranium from the country and a ban on independent enrichment.
Serhan Afacan, director of IRAM, the Ankara-based Center for Iranian Studies, told AFP that trying to link a nuclear deal to other issues would probably be “impossible”.
“For now, the ballistic missile program remains a red line, as it lies at the heart of Iran’s defense architecture,” he said.
Reduce tensions
Iran has warned it will respond immediately with missile strikes against US bases, ships and allies, including Israel.
“We do not limit the geography of the confrontation to the sea alone and have prepared for broader and more advanced scenarios,” the head of the Iranian Defense Council, Ali Shamkhani, said on Friday, according to the Tasnim news agency.
Speaking at a joint news conference in Istanbul with Araghchi, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Israel was pushing for the United States to attack Iran, and urged Washington “not to allow this to happen.”
Iran has blamed the United States and Israel for protests that erupted in late December over economic demands and peaked on Jan. 8 and 9, accusing the two countries of fueling a “terrorist operation” that turned peaceful demonstrations into “riots.”
