Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he is open to a new nuclear deal with Iran.
He informed about this at one of the press conferences, reports Politico.
“Of course I would. We have to make a deal," Trump said.
Trump did not go into the details of future cooperation with Iran, but noted that negotiations are necessary in any case — because of the threat posed by Iran with its desire to obtain nuclear weapons. With his remarks, Trump seems to have tried to ease tensions in relations with the Iranian government, writes Politico. The Republican was told this week that Iran planned to kill him.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that the country is open to discussing nuclear negotiations. At the same time, he noted that tensions in the Middle East may complicate their recovery.
What preceded
For more than a year, the Biden administration has been conducting indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at restoring the Iran nuclear deal.
These efforts collapsed in late 2022, when the US accused Iran of making "unfounded" demands related to an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian facilities. In the months that followed, the administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was "not on the agenda."
The new president of Iran suggested that they are open to interaction with the West. However, a senior State Department official told CNN that they no longer believe they can return to the nuclear deal because Iran has taken too many escalating actions in the years since the talks broke down.
In July of this year, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Iran could probably produce enough material to create a nuclear weapon in one to two weeks. He said that US policy is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that the administration would prefer to use diplomacy to stop that.
- The nuclear agreement with Iran was signed in 2015 by the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, China, Germany and the EU. They agreed that the Iranian government would abandon its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
- In 2018, then US President Donald Trump pulled the country out of the deal on Iranʼs nuclear program and imposed new sanctions against the Iranian regime. He called the deal unfair and expressed doubt that it would limit Tehranʼs nuclear ambitions.