US President Donald Trump says his administration will meet Iranian officials next week to discuss its nuclear programme. This comes just days after the US military launched missile strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
“We’re going to talk to them next week,” Trump said at a news conference in the Netherlands after the annual NATO summit. – “The one thing we’re going to ask for [at the meeting] is what we’ve asked for before: that we don’t want nuclear weapons.
More than a dozen US B-2 bombers dropped bombs on Iranian uranium enrichment and storage facilities on 21 June. U.S. submarines also fired missiles at those facilities.
Trump told a news conference that the facilities had been “destroyed”, denying an earlier and “unreliable”, he said, US intelligence report that the attack may have only set back Iran’s nuclear programme by a few months.
“It’s destroyed. I said Iran would not have nuclear weapons. Well, we blew it up,” Trump said.
“I don’t see them getting back into the nuclear business. I think enough is enough out of them,” he added.
Trump said it was unclear whether the U.S. would sign an agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme at next week’s meeting.
To U.S. blows, Trump has sought an agreement that would require Iran to completely abandon its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Iranian regime has invested tens of billions of dollars in its nuclear programme and ending it would be a blow to Ali Khamenei, the country’s longtime supreme leader.