Trump announces direct talks with Iran amid nuclear tensions

Washington: The US and Iran are holding direct talks with their first meeting scheduled for Saturday at “almost at the top” level, President Donald Trump said Monday, adding a failure to reach an agreement will leave Teheran in “great danger” because it cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon.

The American president gave no indications of the location of the talks or the officials who will be involved. Although he did say several times at a news conference he addressed alongside the visiting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the talks will be held at the “very top” level and “almost at the highest level”.

Trump’s announcement came weeks after he first started the process with a public invitation to talks that was spurned by the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Trump has pursued a policy of maximum pressure on Iran that he kicked off in his first term after rescinding the 2015 JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — also calls the Iran agreement) brokered by President Barack Obama between the P5 UN Security Council members US, UK, France, China and Russia and German as the +1 on the side and Iran on the other that lifted crippling UN sanctions in return for Iran agreeing to stop its nuclear weapons programme.

“We are having direct talks with Iran,” Trump said, adding they will start on Saturday. “We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen. And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or, frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with, if they can avoid it.”

The “obvious” was a veiled reference to his readiness to use the military option in the event of the failure of talks.

“I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger, and I hate to say it is in great danger because they can’t have a nuclear weapon. You know, it’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s all there is. You can’t have it ready right now.”

The American president went on curiously to put on no notice nuclear powers that he believes “should not have” a nuclear bomb.

He did not identify these countries and did not spell out his plans for them. Nine countries are currently believed to be in possession of these bombs: the US, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

–IANS