Trump Expects Iran Talks to Resume This Week

President Donald Trump said on Sept. 27 that he expects talks with Iran to resume this week, while declining to rule out military strikes before the U.S. midterm elections.

Last week, Iran proposed a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for resuming nuclear talks with Washington. Trump rejected the proposal.

The president told Axios in a phone interview that the proposal did not meet his expectations.

“I expect more talks with Iran [this week]. They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make. It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago,” he said. “They overplayed their hand.”

In a separate interview with Fox News on Sept. 27, Trump said he believes the United States is “very soon” going to win the war against Iran through both military and economic fronts, with the goal of ensuring that Tehran cannot develop a nuclear weapon.

“I think we’ll win it both ways. We’ve already won it from a military standpoint, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped that,” he said. “If you look at their economy, it’s gone. They have no economy.”

When asked if military strikes on Iran were still an option before the midterms, Trump told Fox News: “I don’t want to say that. I mean, it’s possible, but I just don’t want to say that.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News on Sept. 27 that Tehran is ready for diplomacy but also prepared for any attack, “even if it comes to a doomsday war.”

Araghchi also said that Iranian officials had yet to receive a formal response from mediators regarding their proposal, despite Trump’s public rejection.

Both sides have expressed a desire to end the months-long war, which has driven up global oil prices by disrupting maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for oil and gas shipments. But the two nations have been unable to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said in a Sept. 27 interview on CNN that Trump rejected Iran’s proposal because it demanded the release of frozen assets and the lifting of sanctions targeting Tehran’s nuclear program before any nuclear agreement is reached.

“The bottom line is they were asking for everything up front with a promise that they would then talk,” Waltz said. “The president’s just not confident that the Iranians are coming in good faith and that they will truly negotiate the end of their nuclear program.”

One of the main U.S. demands is the complete destruction or removal of Iran’s existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran maintains it has a right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election,” he said.

Melanie Sun contributed to this report.