President Trump said Sunday that the United States and Iran were “very close” to a deal to end the three-month war between them and said Tehran had agreed in principle to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
“We’re very close,” Trump told Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press. “They’ve conceded the fact that they will not have nuclear weapons.”
Trump’s framing of the talks as nearly finished is at odds with where Iran’s government appeared to leave them earlier in the week. Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported Monday that Tehran was halting its back-channel exchanges with Washington over what it described as continued ceasefire violations. The country also signaled it would move to fully shut the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi went further, warning that U.S. bases in the region used to attack Iran would be considered legitimate targets.
In the NBC interview, Trump described the gap left to bridge as small but substantive, saying he was pushing to expand the language of the proposed deal so that Iran would be barred not just from developing a nuclear weapon but also from acquiring or buying one from elsewhere.
The president also said the U.S. would help Iran destroy its stockpile of highly enriched uranium if the two sides reached an agreement.
“If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on-site or whether we take it off-site,” Trump said. He added that, absent a deal, “we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”
Negotiators are reportedly still hung up on several major issues, including how much sanctions relief Iran will receive, the fate of its existing enriched-uranium stockpile and whether the U.S. naval blockade ends at the same time Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, CNN reported.
The deal, as it has been described publicly, would extend the ceasefire by 60 days and open formal talks on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump said on May 23 on Truth Social that the broader framework had been “largely negotiated, subject to finalization.”
The administration is also navigating pushback inside Trump’s own party. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker and Thom Tillis have warned in recent weeks that the emerging terms could leave Iran in a stronger strategic position than it was in before the war.
Trump also offered a direct read on Iran’s new leadership. Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his reported successor, is “younger” and “more rational” than his father, the president said. The new leader has not appeared in public since the war began. Trump said he understood Mojtaba Khamenei to be “pretty badly injured” but praised what he described as the new leader’s “bravery” for pursuing a deal while wounded. He said he was open to a direct conversation but had not yet had one.
Pressed by Welker on whether he knew Mojtaba Khamenei’s exact location, Trump declined to say. “There’s a good probability that I do,” he said.
In the Meet the Press interview, Trump said he had no plans to bring U.S. forces home soon. He put the number of troops deployed to the region at 50,000 and said he assessed Iran’s prewar missile stockpile had been cut to “21%, 22%.” He said pulling troops out before a deal would be “foolhardy” because the threat of additional military action was leverage in the negotiations.
The war remains broadly unpopular. A 52% majority of Americans said the U.S. military action in Iran has not been worth it, compared with 23% who said it has been, according to an Ipsos survey conducted in mid-May.
Trump taped the interview on Friday at a farm in Chippewa Falls, Wis. He ended the interview about 50 minutes in, after becoming visibly frustrated by Welker’s questions about election interference and his criticism of the press, NBC News reported.
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