Trump won’t rule out military confrontation
WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump yesterday urged Iran’s leadership to sit down and talk to him about giving up Teheran’s nuclear programme and said he could not rule out a military confrontation given the heightened tensions between the two countries.
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Trump declined to say what prompted him to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group and B52 bombers to the region over ‘‘unspecified threats’’.
Top members of the president’s national security team discussed Iran and other topics during what the White House called a routine meeting.
Trump, who last year pulled Washington out of a 2015 nuclear deal between six world powers and Iran, has expressed a willingness to meet Iranian leaders in the past to no avail and renewed that appeal in talking to reporters.
Asked about Trump’s comments, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi said Iran had been talking with the six powers, including the United States, within the framework of the nuclear deal.
‘‘All of a sudden he decided to leave the negotiating table . . . . What is the guarantee that he will not renege again?’’ Takht Ravanchi said.
He dismissed US allegations of an Iranian threat as ‘‘fake intelligence’’ and said they were ‘‘being produced by the same people who in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq did the same.’’
Trump accused former secretary of state John Kerry, who helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from, of breaking a federal law by having contacts with the Iranians.
Last September Kerry told the Hugh Hewitt radio programme that he had met Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif three or four times.
Trump said Kerry had violated the 1799 Logan Act, which makes it a crime for individual US citizens to negotiate with foreign governments that have a dispute with the US. — Reuters