President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington and Iran are "fairly close" to reaching a nuclear deal, but Tehran warned that his threats of blowing up nuclear facilities and imposing sanctions will not bring the countries to an agreement.
"I think we have a chance of making a deal with Iran," the president told reporters in the White House, reports The Times of Israel Saturday. "They don’t want to be blown up. They would rather make a deal, and I think that could happen in the not-too-distant future."
He also repeated his threats that the United States could "blow up" nuclear laboratories in Iran, even with an agreement.
"I want [the nuclear agreement] very strong, where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody [is] getting killed," he said. "We can blow up a lab, but nobody is going to be in a lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up."
An unnamed Iranian official told the Fars news agency that such threats are "open hostility against Iran's national interests."
"If the U.S. seeks a diplomatic solution, it must abandon the language of threats and sanctions," the official said.
Trump has often threatened to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities if diplomacy doesn't bring a solution to the continued dispute over the country's nuclear program.
Iran also on Friday denied an Austrian intelligence global report that said Tehran's "nuclear weapons development program is well advanced."
Iran has continued to argue that it wants a nuclear program for civilian purposes, not for weaponry.
However, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran is the world's only country in the world that is enriching uranium up to 60%. The rate remains below the 90% threshold needed to make a nuclear weapon, but high above the 3.67% limit that was set in its 2015 agreement with world powers.
It also reported that Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material that was not declared to the U.N. nuclear watchdog at three locations that have long been under international investigation.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned “the fake information” disseminated in the report and demanded an explanation from Austria’s government.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported Friday that in April, Saudi Arabia's 89-year-old King Salman bin Abdulaziz dispatched his son, Prince Khalid bin Salman, to Tehran to warn officials there to either take Trump's offer to negotiate a nuclear agreement or risk war with Israel.
The media had covered the visit, but the content of the message from the king had not been previously reported.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, armed forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi were present at the closed-door meeting, according to sources.
The prince, who served as the Saudi ambassador during Trump's first term in office, reportedly warned the Iranian officials that the president does not have patience for lengthy negotiations.
A week before the meeting, Trump announced that direct talks were taking place with Tehran. His comments came while he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington hoping to win support for attacks on Iran's nuclear sites, were together.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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