President Donald Trump said the United States would meet with Iran next week, but that he wasn’t concerned about reaching a nuclear deal with the country.
Speaking at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in The Hague, Netherlands, Trump revealed that the U.S. would meet with Iranian officials sometime next week, though he was sparse on details. The meeting will be the first time the two have met since Israel launched its surprise attack against Iran on June 13, setting off a string of events leading to the U.S.’s military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities and a ceasefire two days later.
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“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
His approach to the meeting seemed more relaxed than the high-stakes negotiations before the “12 Day War,” expressing indifference regarding a nuclear deal. He reasoned that Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. air and missile strike targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, had totally removed Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
“I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said. “The only thing we’d be asking for is what we were asking for before, about ‘We want no nuclear.’ But we destroyed the nuclear. In other words, that’s destroyed. I said, ‘Iran will not have nuclear.’ Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come.”
“And so I don’t feel very strongly about it,” he added, clarifying, “If we got a document, it wouldn’t be bad.”
The Trump administration has maintained that its Sunday strikes, which involved B-2 bombers dropping 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s underground Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Others have doubted the claim, including a preliminary intelligence assessment, which estimated that the main underground structures had not collapsed and that the strikes only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months.
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The following day, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said new intelligence confirmed that Iran’s nuclear facilities had indeed been destroyed and that any attempt to rebuild the country’s nuclear program would take years.
Iran, meanwhile, has vowed to continue pursuing its nuclear program. On Wednesday, Iran’s parliament unanimously passed a bill to block the International Atomic Energy Agency’s access to its nuclear sites, followed by chants of “death to” America and Israel by lawmakers. Iran’s unelected Guardian Council must still pass the bill.