President Donald Trump made the surprise announcement that his administration will hold a meeting “at almost the highest level” directly with Iran this Saturday to discuss a nuclear deal.
“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters, sitting alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “If the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran in that case.”
Iran has not yet confirmed the meeting.
Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu spanned numerous topics, from tariffs to the war in Gaza to Iran. Both leaders acknowledged the possibility of taking military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, should Iran not agree to terms.
“Doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter. “The obvious is not something I want to be involved with or frankly that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it.” Iran has decried efforts to isolate their state, including new U.S. sanctions, continually saying that they have no intentions of possessing a nuclear weapon.
“We’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “Whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”
In Trump’s first term in office, his “maximum pressure campaign” closed the taps of foreign sales of Iran’s oil exports, which drove Iran to China as its main oil import partner. Trump also withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal brokered under President Barack Obama. Iran had previously ruled out talks with the United States while this pressure campaign persisted.
Now, while the possibility of another U.S.-Iran nuclear deal remains a far-off goal, Trump says he wants to bring Iran to the negotiating table.
“I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran … Iran is going to be in great danger, and I hate to say it,” Trump said.
In the Oval Office, Netanyahu and Trump also addressed the war in Gaza, where a ceasefire is no longer in place.
“We spoke about not only the hostages, but about Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “The hostages are in agony and we want to get them all out.”
Netanyahu’s engagement over hostages continued conversations from earlier in the day with special envoy Steve Witkoff, a key figure in the initial ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that allowed for 33 hostages to be returned to their families.
“We’re committed to getting all the hostages out, but also eliminating the evil tyranny of Hamas in Gaza,” Netanyahu said. He called Trump a “great, great champion” for the Israeli cause.
“I’d like to see the war stop,” Trump said. “We are trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire, we’ll see what happens.”
Netanyahu also praised Trump’s “vision” for developing Gaza, and said he wants Palestinians to “have a choice” to leave. Trump, who criticized the Oslo Accords — the negotiated peace deal that gave Palestinians limited self-governance over the West Bank and Gaza Strip — again called Gaza “an incredible piece of important real estate.”
“If you take the people, the Palestinians, and you move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that,” Trump said, suggesting Palestinians leave what he called a “freedom zone.”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.