WASHINGTON
\nUS President Donald Trump said he wants to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran and sent a letter to its leadership on Thursday saying he hoped the Islamic Republic, arch foe of longtime US ally Israel, would agree to talk.
\n\u201cI said I hope you\u2019re going to negotiate, because it\u2019s going to be a lot better for Iran,\u201d Trump said in the interview with Fox Business Network broadcast on Friday.
\n\u201cI think they want to get that letter. The other alternative is we have to do something, because you can\u2019t let another nuclear weapon.\u201d
\nThere was no immediate response from the foreign ministry in Iran, where it is currently the weekend, to a request for comment on Trump\u2019s remarks.
\nThe letter appeared to have been addressed to Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The White House did not immediately respond to a request about that.
\n\u201cThere are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI would prefer to make a deal, because I\u2019m not looking to hurt Iran. They\u2019re great people.\u201d
\nTrump has upended U.S. foreign policy after taking office in January, adopting a more conciliatory stance towards Russia that has left Western allies wary as he tries to broker an end to Moscow\u2019s three-year-old war in Ukraine.
\nTrump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, a multinational agreement to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, in 2018, a year into his first White House term.
\nHe said in February he would like to make a deal with Iran that prevents that country from developing a nuclear weapon.
\nRussia has offered to mediate between the United States and Iran, a source briefed on discussions told Reuters on Tuesday, as the Kremlin vowed to do everything possible to facilitate a peaceful solution to tensions over Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme.
\nRussian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov discussed international efforts to resolve the situation around Iran\u2019s nuclear programme with Iranian ambassador Kazem Jalali, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON US President Donald Trump said he wants to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran and sent a letter to its leadership on Thursday saying he hoped the Islamic Republic, arch foe of longtime US ally Israel, would agree to talk. \u201cI said I hope you\u2019re going to negotiate, because it\u2019s going to be a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78120,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78105\/revisions\/78120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}