Washington: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran and the United States are “very close” to reaching a peace agreement.
This was stated by Trump in an interview with NBC.
There are still “a couple of points” of disagreement, which “don’t even seem like important points”, the US President added, saying that Iran has already accepted a clause in which it commits not to develop nuclear weapons.
However, Trump specified that he wants Iran to also renounce the right to acquire such weapons in other ways. Iran initially offered “some resistance and then stopped doing so,” Italian news agency Adnkronos reported.
Trump asks Israel for “more surgical” raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
“I would like Lebanon to have a better life. I would like to see a more targeted attack against Hezbollah. I think it should be more surgical,” he said in the NBC News interview on Sunday.
On Sunday, another Israeli raid in Beirut left two dead and 11 others injured.
According to the latest official data, Israeli air raids on Lebanon have killed more than 3,560 people since the start of the new conflict on March 2.
On the Israeli side, according to the Army, 29 soldiers and one civilian contractor were killed in Lebanon.
Trump said that he had ”never spoken directly” with Iran’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, but confirmed that the Iranian leader ”is participating in the process to reach an agreement” to end the war.
Interviewed by NBC, Trump described Mojtaba Khamenei as ”more rational than his father” Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an air raid on Tehran on the first day of the war on February 28.
Trump also described Mojtaba Khamenei as a courageous man.
”He is quite seriously injured. So there is courage in him. Many people, if they were so seriously injured, would not talk about, you know, ‘How are we doing with the United States?’. They would have other things on their mind. So there is a certain courage in this man. But he is very seriously injured,” the US President said.
The new Iranian leadership is “more rational and very intelligent,” Trump added, reiterating that he is open to direct talks with the new Supreme Leader.
“I would do it if he wanted to — Trump said — but I have never spoken to him directly.”
The US will cooperate with Iran to recover and dispose of the enriched uranium at its disposal once an agreement is reached between Washington and Tehran to end the war, which began on February 28.
However, if an agreement is not reached, the US will further weaken the Iranian army by recovering the uranium itself. This was said by US President Trump in an interview with NBC.
“If we reach an agreement that proves us right, we will cooperate. We will use our equipment” and ”we will take away and destroy” the uranium, ”whether it is on site or we take it elsewhere,” Trump said.
But ”we will not allow anyone to shoot at us, okay?”, Trump added.
”If we do not reach an agreement, we will militarily eliminate the uranium stockpiles very harshly,” he concluded.
(IANS)
