Trump to Netanyahu: 'Not appropriate' to bomb Iran, as US engages in talks
US President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that the country is "down to final strokes with Iran", as the two sides engage in talks to establish an agreement designed to curb Iran's nuclear energy development in return for an easing of US sanctions.
Key to the talks has been exactly how much uranium enrichment Iran can undertake, if any at all. The Iranians say they must be able to do so for a deal to be struck. But the US does not appear to have publicly settled on a firm policy approach in that regard, given the administration's mixed messaging.
The two sides are keen on replacing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Obama-negotiated 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from in 2018. In that deal, Iran was limited to 3.67 percent uranium enrichment, enough for civilian nuclear power and research.
Earlier this year, Iran's foreign minister said the JCPOA is "no longer good for us" and "[Trump] does not want another JCPOA either."
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As of Thursday, the discussions are in their "final moments," Trump said, leading him to admit that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week how it was "inappropriate" for Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
"I'd like to be honest, yes, I did," Trump told a reporter who asked if he warned Netanyahu against taking action that could derail talks.
"It's not a warning," he added. "I said, 'I don't think it's appropriate'... We're having very good discussions with them."
"If we can settle it with a very strong document, very strong, with inspections, and no trust," Trump said. "I don't trust anybody. So no trust. I want it very strong, where we can go in with inspectors."
The US, he said, "can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want," as long as nobody gets killed in Iran.
"We can blow up a lab, but nobody's going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up. Right? Two ways of doing it," he explained.
"I told [Netanyahu] this would be inappropriate to do right now because we're very close to a solution. Now, that could change at any moment, and change with a phone call, but right now I think they want to make a deal. And if we can make a deal, [we can] save a lot of lives."
State of talks
On Wednesday, the State Department confirmed that the fifth round of talks between the two sides took place in Rome on Friday, hosted by the Omani embassy there. Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was in attendance for about two and a half hours, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
A new report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency, cited by the AP, said “Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so."
“These actions reduce the time required to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a first nuclear device to probably less than one week," the report added.
Independent experts, however, have long put Iran's "breakout" timeline at several months rather than weeks.
Iran is second only to Russia in facing crippling US sanctions. It has long maintained that it does not seek a nuclear bomb, with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei saying in 2019 that such weapons are "forbidden under Islamic law".
But Iran is also currently enriching uranium to the 60 percent threshold, just short of weapons grade, including by using advanced centrifuge designs at the deeply buried Fordow enrichment facility, a fact sheet from the Washington-based National Iranian American Council showed.
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