Iran ‘wants to talk,’ says Trump
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” President Trump told The Atlantic in a phone call from his Mar-a-Lago club shortly before 9:30 a.m.
Asked whether his conversation with the Iranians would happen today or tomorrow, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that.” He noted that some of the Iranians involved in negotiations in recent weeks were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big—that was a big hit,” he said. “They should have done it sooner, Michael. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”
Asked whether he was willing to prolong the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran to support a popular uprising if one unfolds, President Trump was noncommittal.
“I have to look at the situation at the time it happens. You can’t give an answer to that question,” he said.
The president also expressed confidence that a successful uprising was coming, noting the signs of celebration in the streets of Iran and supportive gatherings of expatriate Iranians in New York and Los Angeles.
“That is going to happen. You are seeing that, and I think it’s gonna happen. A lot of people are extremely happy over there and in Los Angeles and in many other places,” he said.
Trump said he was pleased with Iranian people’s reaction so far. “Knowing it’s very dangerous, knowing I’ve told everybody to stay in place—I think it’s a very dangerous place right now,” he told me. “The people over there are shouting in the streets with happiness, but at the same time, there are a lot of bombs coming down.”
Asked whether he had any indication of renewed Iranian threats against the U.S. homeland since the start of the attack, Trump said, “I don’t want to tell you that.”
Trump argued that the attack’s effect on oil markets, which reopen tonight, would likely be less disruptive on American pocketbooks than some analysts had predicted, given the early success of the operation. “This could have been a huge price increase with respect to oil, if things went wrong,” he said.
“So we’ll see what happens,” he added, before pivoting back to his decision to attack Iran for the second time since June. “People have wanted to do it for 47 years. They’ve killed people for 47 years, and now it’s reversed on them.”
Link to CBN Unfiltered👇🏻 https://chat.whatsapp.com/GFjg1uTPgNdHQrEAXUF4pk