President says he is ready to talk with Iran

Donald Trump has said he is ready to meet with Iran’s leadership “whenever they want”, without any conditions attached. Tensions between the two countries have markedly increased since the president pulled the US out of the nuclear agreement in May. He warned Iran last week that threats would be met with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”. But last night Mr Trump said Iran would “probably end up wanting to meet”, and hailed the success of his talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

DONALD TRUMP declared yesterday that he was ready to meet with Iran’s leadership “whenever they want” without any conditions, as he hailed the benefits of diplomacy.

It comes just a week after the US president warned Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, that threats against America would be met with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”.

Tensions between the two countries have markedly increased since Mr Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear agreement in May, despite protests from a number of European allies.

Mr Trump said he was willing to sit down with Iranian leaders to achieve a “meaningful” new deal “not the waste of paper that the other deal was”.

“I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet,” he said. “I do believe that they will probably end up wanting to meet. I’m ready to meet whenever they want to.”

Mr Trump hailed the success of his meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

“Speaking to other people, especially when you’re talking about potentials of war and death and famine and lots of other things – you meet. There’s nothing wrong with meeting,” he said.

“We met, as you know, with Chairman Kim and it … you haven’t had a missile fired off in nine months, we got our prisoners back, so many things have happened so positive.”

“I had a great meeting with President Putin of Russia. I think it was a great meeting in terms of the future, in terms of safety and economic development and protecting Israel and protecting everybody.”

While Mr Trump said there would be no preconditions to a meeting, he did appear to hedge the possibility of a meeting on an ability to “work something out that’s meaningful” with Iran.

However some will be sceptical over the likelihood of an imminent meeting, with Mr Trump also referring to the country’s leadership as a “brutal regime”, and restating his position that “Iran must never be allowed to posses a nuclear weapon”.

The president made the remarks during a press conference with Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister, at the White House.

Mr Trump praised Mr Conte for his hard-line approach to immigration and called on other European heads of state to do the same.

Mr Conte has sought to position himself as a conduit between America and Europe, with Britain, Germany and France publicly disagreeing with the US president on a number of issues.

In a warm exchange yesterday, he referred to the president as “Donald” while Mr Trump boasted the two leaders were “both outsiders to politics”.

Mr Conte took office last month, promising to bring radical change to Italy, including more generous welfare provision and to tackle immigration.

Before his visit there was speculation that Mr Conte, whose populist government is pushing for new ties with Russia, would call on Mr Trump to lift economic sanctions on the Kremlin.

However the president insisted that “sanctions on Russia will remain” as they are.