President Donald Trump on Sunday said U.S. negotiators will communicate with their Iranian counterparts over the telephone instead of traveling abroad for talks to end the war.
The president elaborated on his decision over the weekend to cancel the U.S. negotiating delegation’s planned trip to Pakistan. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been scheduled to visit the country, which has been a crucial mediator in peace talks seeking to end the war between Washington and Tehran.
“By the time they get there, it’s hours and hours and hours of flying,” Trump told Fox News. “I said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore. We have all the cards.’ If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us.”
CAN TRUMP SECURE A DEAL ‘FAR BETTER’ THAN THE 2015 IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL?
“You know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines,” the president continued. “We had a meeting for Tuesday, and it was on Saturday that I was saying, ‘When are we meeting, Tuesday?’ because it’s so far. So great respect for Pakistan because they’ve been terrific. They’ve really tried, and they’ll stay involved, but we’re going to do it by telephone. … Again, they know what has to be in the agreement. Very simple. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. Otherwise, there’s no reason to meet.”
The development comes after the president first announced he was calling off the diplomatic trip on Saturday after Washington had been involved in peace talks with Iran seeking to end the conflict since around March 21.
“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards; they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
Trump told reporters that Washington received a new proposal from Iran shortly after he canceled the Pakistan trip, but offered few details.
“Immediately, when I canceled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better,” Trump said, adding later that Iran has “offered a lot but not enough.”
The war was triggered on Feb. 28 when the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, citing concerns over the regime’s nuclear program. The decision was made after the U.S. was told by Iranian leadership that it had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs within 10 days, according to Trump’s team.
Top tiers of Iran’s leadership, including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been eliminated since the war started, while its navy and air force are in tatters, according to Washington.
Trump’s blockade on all vessels entering or departing Iranian ports has further damaged the regime, as it means the country will soon run out of storage space for the oil it is producing and cannot export due to the blockade.
Trump suggested Sunday that Iran’s oil infrastructure could explode due to the backlog.
TRUMP: US DOESN’T KNOW WHO ‘THE LEADER IS IN IRAN’
“When you have to turn it off because you have no place to store this oil, either put it on ships or storage tanks, which they are just about finished with, a very bad thing is going to happen,” the president said. “What happens is that line explodes from within. Both mechanically and in the earth, something happens where it just explodes, and they say they only have about 3 days left before that happens.
“When you have lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them, they have no ships because of the blockade,” he added.
