The cat-and-mouse game between the U.S. and Iran continued while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to the Oval Office to meet with Donald Trump.
Trump shocked assembled reporters when he said that the U.S. and Iran would hold direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
“We have a very big meeting on Saturday, and we’re dealing with them directly,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office while sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump added.
“And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable,” Trump continued. He added that the talks would be at a very high level and didn’t mention where the talks would take place.
The last time Iran and the United States held direct talks was in 2015 during negotiations for the failed nuclear deal. Tehran is not on the same page with Trump.
“As I announced last night, the (Iran-US) talks will be held in Oman on Saturday. These talks will be conducted indirectly, and we will not accept any other method of negotiation,” Iran’s MEHR News Agency quoted Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying after Trump’s Oval Office announcement. “It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court,” he posted on his X account.
Trump sent a letter on March 7 to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting direct negotiations that Khamenei turned down flat, saying he wouldn’t be “bullied” into talks as long as there were economic sanctions on Iran.
“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it will be a very bad day for Iran,” Trump said.
Trita Parsi, founder and former executive director of the pro-Iranian National Iranian American Council, believes that even though the talks may begin as “indirect” negotiations, the high level participants suggests the meeting could become “direct” talks.
NIAC, the National Iranian American Council, was founded and is led by the anti-American Iranian national, Trita Parsi, in the U.S. on a Green Card since 1997. In 2015 a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s stated ‘NIAC’s day-to-day activities were not inconsistent… pic.twitter.com/yic5G3yph7
— dan linnaeus (@DanLinnaeus) February 28, 2025
Warnings by Trump of military action against Iran had jangled already tense nerves across the Middle East after open warfare in Gaza and Lebanon, military strikes on Yemen, a change of leadership in Syria and Israeli-Iranian exchanges of fire.
Trump has said he would prefer a deal over Iran’s nuclear program to a military confrontation and on March 7 he said he had written to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to suggest talks. Iranian officials said at the time that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations.
“We’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons, that it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way it was done in Libya,” Netanyahu told reporters. “I think that would be a good thing.
“But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons,” he added.
The United States and Israel have been saying that for 35 years. Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again have all threatened Iran, breathing fire and smoke to varying degrees, telling the American people and the world that Iran would never possess a nuclear weapon.
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Tehran is within a hair’s breadth of building one if they haven’t already. Negotiations at this point are a formality. Iran will never dismantle its nuclear program nor give up its ambition to possess nuclear weapons – certainly not under direct threat from the United States president.
There will be war unless both Netanyahu and Trump are bluffing. Neither man has been known to do so.
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