Trump aides push for nuclear deal with Iran

Donald Trump is pursuing a behind the scenes deal, despite claiming he isn’t talking to Iran and attacking Ayatollah Khamenei for his ‘hatred and disgust’ towards Israel and the US.

Donald Trump’s aides are talking behind the scenes to Iran over a possible nuclear deal.

President Trump is pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran behind the scenes despite claiming he is not “even talking to them” and attacking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his “anger, hatred and disgust” towards Israel and the US.

Trump’s peace envoy Steve Witkoff remains in contact through direct and indirect channels with Iranian officials, the White House confirmed, even as Tehran asserts its sovereign right to enrich uranium.

The failure of a Democrat resolution in the Senate to restrain Trump’s war powers, which would have required Congress to debate and vote before the US could strike Iran again, has maintained the threat of further US bombings. But Trump has a carrot as well as a stick, in the form of sanctions relief, which Witkoff can offer as a reward for Tehran signing up to a new long-term deal to replace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump withdrew from in 2018.

Moreover, the Trump administration is attempting to increase the isolation of Iran by signing up more Arab states to the Abraham Accords, the normalisation agreements Trump brokered in his first term for Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, with Syria entering talks on joining. Trump honoured his pledge made on his visit to the Gulf in May to ease sanctions on Damascus in an executive order on Monday.

Trump hopes to keep pressure on Iran to follow through and sign a written agreement to abandon or limit enrichment by concluding a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the coming days. The White House confirmed that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was due to make his third Oval Office visit of Trump’s second term on July 7.

“At the end of the day, President Trump is always eager to have a deal,” said Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, and former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council.

“The challenge is going to be, it is hard to imagine the US moving off of its ‘no enrichment’ line. So that means Iran would have to make a decision that it’s going to change a long-held policy, that it must be able to have a right to self-enrich.”

It may be possible to return to the idea of an international consortium overseeing an Iranian civil nuclear program, either inside or out of the country itself, he said. But without Iranian agreement “there has to be an expectation that Israel is going to strike again”.

Trump appears highly sensitive to any suggestion that the deal he ends up with will simply be a new version of the JCPOA deal negotiated by President Obama.

He attacked Chris Coons, a Democratic senator, for repeating media speculation that Trump is considering something similar to Obama’s deal backed up with lucrative sanctions relief.

“Tell phony Democrat senator Chris Coons that I am not offering Iran ANYTHING, unlike Obama, who paid them billions under the stupid ‘road to a nuclear weapon’ JCPOA (which would now be expired!),” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. “Nor am I even talking to them since we totally OBLITERATED their nuclear facilities.”

Asked about Trump’s stonewalling, after Iran rejected his suggestion that it could sign an agreement as soon as this week, Karoline Leavitt, his spokeswoman, made clear that Witkoff was free to carry on his negotiations. “Our special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been in communication both directly and indirectly with the Iranians,” she said on Monday. “That communication continues. The president himself has not talked to Iran, which he pointed out in his true statement.”

Witkoff spoke with Egyptian officials on Monday as part of his indirect negotiations, following an olive branch from the Iranian deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi.

“We are hearing from Washington telling us that they want to talk. By the way, no dates have been set. We have not agreed to any date, we have not agreed to the modality,” Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC. “Right now we are seeking an answer to this question – are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in a dialogue? We do not want war. We want to engage in dialogue and diplomacy, but we have to be prepared, we have to be cautious, not to be surprised again, not looking for war.”

The Times