Latest news with #TrumpNegotiations
Fox News
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
As Iran talks get underway, expert raises alarm over lack of plan to secure nuclear material
European and Iranian negotiators ended their talks in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday without a clear breakthrough, but diplomats told The Associated Press they were hopeful of more discussions with the Iranians. The talks with Iran come a day after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message from President Trump, stating, "Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks." One former Pentagon official says there is an important issue that is not being discussed. "If Iran gives up its nuclear program as Trump has demanded, there's another problem we're not talking about, which is how do we get all the nuclear material outside of Iran," Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, told Fox News Digital. Rubin, who has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq, mentioned that there are a few options available. "The United States could do it, but we don't want boots on the ground." He said the International Atomic Energy Agency could be tasked with doing it, adding, "Who really trusts the United Nations and U.N. agencies?" "If Trump is serious about getting Iran to forfeit its nuclear program, it's time to start having a conversation with other allies about who could take command, control and custody of this nuclear material until it's outside of Iran." Rubin said he would nominate India to seize the nuclear material. "They are trusted by the Americans, they're trusted by the Israelis and they're trusted by the Iranians. But we need to start not only being reactive, but also proactive," said Rubin Rubin cited a quote from Margaret Thatcher to George H.W. Bush in 1990 — "Don't go wobbly on me now, George" — when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. "I suspect Marco Rubio is filling Margaret Thatcher's britches, that he is the one going around now to our European allies, saying, 'Don't go wobbly on me now.,'" said Rubin. "[He] is saying this to everyone else within the European Union and the United Kingdom because if the Europeans have their choice, they're going to choose quiet over common sense." On Thursday, Rubio spoke with counterparts to discuss the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict. According to State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, he spoke with Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in separate conversations about the ongoing conflict. They all agreed to "continue to work together closely to commit to a path of peace and ensure that Iran never develops a nuclear weapon," Bruce said.
The Independent
12 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump warns Iran: ‘I will make my decision whether or not to go within two weeks'
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he'll decide on whether to order U.S. warplanes to strike Iranian nuclear facilities within the next two weeks depending on whether or not Tehran engages in talks over ending their nuclear weapons program. In statement relayed through White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump said: ' Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' The president's latest pronouncement comes just a day after he told reporters that he'd received outreach from Iranian leaders, who he said had expressed interest in coming to Washington for direct negotiations. Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Iranian negotiators should have accepted an agreement his negotiators had put forth during talks that took place over the last two months, but expressed hope that there could be further talks despite the ratcheted-up hostilities in the days since Israel launched a military operation to take out much of Iran's nuclear research and military capabilities. 'They should have made the deal. I had a great deal for them. They should have made that deal 60 days. We talked about it, and in the end, they decided not to do it, and now they wish they did it, and they want to meet, but it's, you know, late to meet, but they want to meet, and they want to come to the White House. They'll even come to the White House. So we'll see,' Trump said. TRUMP JUEZ (AP) Asked to clarify the circumstances under which such talks could take place, Leavitt told reporters she would not 'get into the reasoning and the rationale' behind Trump's statement, nor would she say whether any communications between Washington and Tehran are happening directly or through intermediaries. She did, however, exhort Americans to 'trust in President Trump.' She later added that any agreement reached to stave off U.S. airstrikes would 'absolutely not' permit Tehran to retain the capacity to enrich uranium in any form, echoing the terms of what was proposed during talks between Iranian officials and Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, earlier this month. Trump's promise of a decision within the next two weeks is the latest in a series of situations in which he has promised diplomatic or other results within 14 days before extending that deadline, such as when he told reporters last month that he would know whether Russian president Vladimir Putin would be willing to end his country's three-year-old war against Ukraine 'in about two weeks.' But Leavitt claimed the current circumstances are 'very, very different' from the situation in Ukraine while stressing that Trump is 'peacemaker-in-chief' who 'is always interested in a diplomatic solution to the problems in the global conflicts in this world.' 'If there's a chance for diplomacy, the President's always going to grab it, but he's not afraid to use strength as well,' he said. The president is understood to have already green-lit a plan for U.S. warplanes to drop so-called 'bunker buster' bombs onto Iran's Fordow nuclear facility, which is buried deep within a mountain near the city of Qom, but held off on final approval of the airstrikes in hopes that the threat of American involvement would bring Iranian negotiators back to the table. 'I have ideas on what to do but I haven't made a final – I like to make the final decision one second before it's due,' Trump told reporters on Wednesday. The new timeline for U.S. involvement in Israel's week-old war against Iran comes as Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, is set to sit down with his British, French and German counterparts along with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in Geneva on Friday. Those talks would be the first between Iran and Western officials since Israel launched a what it called a preemptive attack on Iran last week. Separately, Araqchi has spoken by phone with Witkoff, the New York real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump who has served as the president's roving diplomat since he returned to the White House in January. Araqchi reportedly told Witkoff that Tehran would not engage in talks with the U.S. unless Israel halts attacks. At present, Iran shows little sign of backing down and continued its missile assault on southern Israel overnight, causing 'extensive damage' to a major hospital, the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheba. Israel does not appear to be interested in easing the tensions following that strike, with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz calling supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "the modern-day Hitler' after the missile strike. 'A dictator like Khamenei, who heads a country like Iran and has made the destruction of the State of Israel his declared goal, this horrific goal of destroying Israel, cannot be allowed to continue or materialize,' Katz said. While Trump's new timeline may give new hope to the possibility of a diplomatic resolution, American diplomats have already evacuated from the region, and earlier this week U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued an 'urgent notice' for Americans in Israel to make evacuation plans and reach out to the State Department for information on flights and cruise ship departures. With additional reporting by agencies
Bloomberg
15 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump Sets Two-Week Deadline on Iran Strikes; Israel Hits Nuclear Sites
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe is your essential morning viewing to stay ahead. Live from London, we set the agenda for your day, catching you up with overnight markets news from the US and Asia. And we'll tell you what matters for investors in Europe, giving you insight before trading begins. President Trump says he will decide on possible Iran strikes within two week, opening the door to possible negotiations with Tehran. This as Israel attacks more Iranian nuclear sites across the country. (Source: Bloomberg)
Arab News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Trump tells Putin to end Ukraine war before mediating Iran-Israel
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump appeared Wednesday to rebuff Vladimir Putin's offer to mediate in the Israel-Iran conflict, saying the Russian president should end his own war in Ukraine first. 'He actually offered to help mediate. I said, 'Do me a favor, mediate your own. Let's mediate Russia first, okay?'' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'I said 'Vladimir, let's mediate Russia first, you can worry about this later.'' But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to suggest the pair had not even spoken, telling Russian state news agency TASS: 'He was speaking figuratively. Life is so eventful right now that looking back a few days is like looking back to yesterday.' Later Wednesday Trump said a change in Iran's government 'could happen,' and also indicated that negotiations could be in the offing, without giving details. 'They want to meet, they want to come to the White House — I may do that,' Trump told reporters.
CNN
11-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
As Trump's ‘two week' deadline for Russia expires, he faces a series of unresolved foreign conflicts
Two weeks after President Donald Trump set a 14-day timeline for determining the willingness of his Russian counterpart to end the conflict in Ukraine, he says he is coming to believe Vladimir Putin doesn't care about the human cost of his war. 'I'm starting to think maybe he doesn't,' Trump said when an interviewer asked whether Putin minded losing thousands of his soldiers in Ukraine every week. The candid admission, made in a New York Post podcast recorded this week, underscored the difficulties Trump continues to face in brokering complex international deals, including on issues he once said could be easily resolved. He also now appears less confident in striking a nuclear deal with Iran, despite saying days ago he believed the talks were progressing in the right direction. And negotiations to end the war in Gaza have been deadlocked, with Trump's agitation toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deepening. While Trump did find success this week in working out an agreement with China to roll back some of the punitive measures each side had enacted amid a worsening trade war, it wasn't clear how long the new framework would hold. A deal made last month in Switzerland with similar terms quickly fell apart. And so far there has been only one trade agreement to emerge from the 90-day negotiating period Trump set with US partners this spring after pausing his reciprocal tariffs. The deadline comes due in early July. Even Trump's overtures to his onetime pen-pal Kim Jong Un have apparently fallen flat. Attempts to deliver a letter from Trump to the North Korean dictator were rebuffed by diplomats based at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, according to the Seoul-based NK News, scuttling immediate hopes of rekindling the first-term friendship Trump enjoyed with the strongman. CNN has reached out to the White House about the letter. But the administration hasn't given up on any of the difficult issues that remain unresolved. Despite suggesting he might walk away entirely from the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump hasn't entirely abandoned his efforts. He is entering an intensive stretch of summitry that is likely to focus on the war, including a Group of 7 meeting in Canada next week and a NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month. His team, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff, plans another round of Iran talks in the coming days, even amid loudening opposition to a deal from some Iran hawks and Israeli officials. And trade talks continue apace as the July 9 deadline nears. 'You're going to see deal after deal that's going to start coming next week. And the week after and the week after,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Wednesday. 'We've got lots of them in the hopper. We just want to make sure they're the best deal we can possibly make. We don't want to rush.' Still, Trump's own comments this week offered stark insight into his frustrated — and, for him, frustrating — attempts at negotiating deals around the world. 'We make progress and then all of a sudden, something gets bombed that shouldn't be bombed, and that's the end of the progress,' he said of the Ukraine conflict, describing a two-steps-forward, one-step-back reality to the grinding efforts to broker a ceasefire. It was two weeks ago Wednesday that Trump vowed to have an answer in a fortnight on Putin's willingness to end the war, a timeline he's used repeatedly this spring when questioned about his Ukraine policy. Since then, Trump has not made a decision on applying new sanctions on Moscow, even as his Republican allies on Capitol Hill agitate for harsher measures and Europe imposes new restrictions on Russia's oil and gas sector. 'I'll use it if it's necessary,' he told reporters aboard Air Force One last Friday. He said senators, many of whom have signed on to a bill to increase sanctions on Russia, are leaving the decision up to him. But he said he hadn't discussed the matter with them. 'I haven't spoken to them about it,' he said. 'They have a bill, it's going to be up to me, it's my option.' At the same time, Trump hasn't taken steps toward boosting military assistance to Ukraine, which this week has come under some of the biggest drone assaults of the war. It's something he's likely to hear about from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the upcoming summits, which Zelensky is expected to attend. Trump's defense chief Pete Hegseth told lawmakers Tuesday there would be a 'reduction in this budget' of military assistance to Kyiv. 'This administration takes a very different view of that conflict. We believe that a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation's interests, especially with all the competing interests around the globe,' Hegseth said in congressional testimony. Since he offered the two-week deadline two weeks ago, Trump spoke to Putin once. But in his own telling, the conversation was not enough to prompt an immediate peace. 'We had a good conversation,' Trump said. 'But so far, nothing's come of it.' So, too, has nothing come yet from his efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. 'I'm getting more and more less confident about it. They seem to be delaying, and I think that's a shame, but I'm less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago,' Trump said in the podcast interview. 'Something happened to them, but I am much less confident of a deal being made,' he went on, saying it was his 'instincts' telling him a deal was moving further from reach. At issue is Iran's insistence it be able to continue enriching uranium, which Trump has said it must give up in order to see some sanctions lifted as part of a deal. That's much the same issue that prolonged nuclear talks with Iran under Barack Obama, whose eventual deal allowed low levels of enrichment. Trump withdrew from the pact during his first term, but now finds himself working through many of the same sticking points. A new round of talks with Iran is set to take place in the coming days, US officials have said. The US has been waiting for an official response from Tehran to its latest proposal. A two-month deadline to reach a deal that Trump set in a letter to Iran's leaders in April is set to expire this week. In the podcast interview, Trump said Iran would regret not making a deal, since the alternative was war. 'It would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying,' he said. 'Yes, so much nicer to do it. But I don't think I see the same level of enthusiasm for them to make a deal.'
