President Donald Trump said it’s up in the air whether he will sign off on military strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities — comments that come as his administration weighs U.S. involvement in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran.
Trump told reporters outside the White House Wednesday that he hasn’t ruled out whether the U.S. will strike Iranian nuclear facilities, but said that the coming days or the ‘next week is going to be very big.’
Additionally, Trump said that Iran’s capital, Tehran, is facing a lot of problems as it seeks to come to the negotiating table after abandoning talks scheduled for Sunday.
‘Yes, I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this that Iran’s got a lot of trouble and they want to negotiate,’ Trump told reporters Wednesday. ‘And I said, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction? Why didn’t you go? I said to people, why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would have had a country. It’s very sad to watch this.’
Trump previously has said he believes that Iran was very close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, and has pushed Iran to sign a nuclear agreement. Although talks were scheduled for the U.S. and Iran in Oman Sunday, Iran withdrew Friday from the discussions.
Trump doubled down on his previous statements Wednesday asserting that Iran could not obtain a nuclear weapon.
‘This is just not a threat you can have. And we’ve been threatened by Iran for many years,’ Trump said. ‘You know, if you go back and look at my history, if you go back 15 years, I was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. I’ve been saying it for a long time.’
As a result, Trump told reporters he’s offered Iran the ‘ultimate ultimatum.’
‘Maybe you could call it the ultimate — the ultimate ultimatum, right?’ he said.
Tensions between Israel and Iran escalated Thursday after Israel launched massive airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear sites that Israel claims have killed several high-ranking military leaders. In response, Iran also has launched strikes against Israel as the two ramp up military campaigns against one another.
While Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said that the U.S. was not involved in the strikes against Iran, Trump later told Reuters that he was aware of the attacks ahead of time.
Meanwhile, Iran has said that the U.S. entering the conflict would mean an ‘all-out war.’
‘Any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region,’ Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Wednesday during an interview with Al Jazeera English.
Trump has long cautioned that Iran could face military consequences if it fails to negotiate a nuclear deal, and signed an executive order in February instructing the Treasury Department to execute ‘maximum economic pressure’ upon Iran through a series of sanctions aimed at sinking Iran’s oil exports.