By Nkiruka Nnorom with agency report
U.S President, Donald Trump, yesterday claimed that Iran has agreed it will not have a nuclear weapon and that the country’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was involved in negotiations with the US.
The bold claims were made during an interview on the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, as violence erupted in the Gulf once again after the US and Iran exchanged series of strikes.
Trump’s remarks followed comments by the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, at a congressional hearing Tuesday that there were indications Khamenei was taking a bigger part in peace talks, despite not being seen publicly since the war began on February 28.
US officials have long claimed that Khamenei sustained serious injuries in the same bombing that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
Trump also suggested that he might meet Khamenei at some point and that he would “like to meet him”.
“He’s involved. Absolutely,” Trump told the New York Post. “Yeah, I think they have a lot of respect for him.”
When asked about Khamenei’s condition, Trump said: “I don’t know, I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him.”
He added: “If you believe the stories he is, you know, missing a lot of different parts.”
Asked whether he would meet with Khamenei, he replied: “Yeah, I’d like to meet him. I’d like to meet everybody … We probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.”
Commenting on Iran’s nuclear programme, Trump claimed Tehran has agreed to not obtain a nuclear weapon.
He said: “We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon, and they’ve already agreed they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”
When pressed further, he said: “Oh, yeah, they’ve agreed to that. I mean, they can change their mind, but that was one of the things they had to agree. They’ve agreed to that. That was the big thing.”
Though there was no immediate comment from Iran, nuclear issue has long remained a major bone of contention in talks between Tehran and Washington.
Marco Rubio had told a congressional hearing on Tuesday that Iran had agreed to negotiate aspects of its nuclear programme that it had refused to discuss even a month ago.
We don’t need boots on the ground now, says Trump
Trump also said the US does not need its forces on the ground in Iran, saying the war was going well without the need to send troops.
“We don’t need boots on the ground now,” he told the New York Post. “We wiped out much of their [Iran’s] military with just bombing. We didn’t put anybody in the ground.”
