US President Donald Trump is trying to build trust with Iran to avoid armed conflict, Washington’s Middle Eastern envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview released Friday.
On March 7, Trump wrote to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying he had urged negotiations to resume on Iran’s nuclear program.
“I am the president of peace. That’s what I want. There’s no reason for us to make this militarized. We should talk about it,” Witkov told right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, the National reported.
“Americans should know that when threats stand up to Iran, they can’t get anywhere,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech aired Friday.
Witkov added that the US continues to debate with Iran through “back channel, through multiple countries and multiple conduits.”
Trump “is open to the opportunity to clean it all up with Iran, where they will return to the world and become a great nation again… he wants to build trust with them,” he said.
During his first presidential term, Trump abandoned his multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, which was approved by UN Security Council resolution 2231.
The nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), worked well. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has confirmed that Iran is fully faithful to the terms of the agreement.
Jake Sullivan, who served as President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said he quit the deal because Trump was signed by the Barack Obama administration.
The deal signed between Iran, five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union, has conducted the most stringent tests on Iran’s nuclear program.
Under the agreement, Iran agreed to place restrictions on nuclear activities in exchange for the end of economic and financial sanctions. Even after Trump withdrew from the deal, Iran remained fully committed to the contract for a year. However, the failure to take action by the European side to compensate for US sanctions gradually began to lift nuclear activities.