President Trump says Iranian leaders will negotiate with him if he wins a second term, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, right, has said he won’t consider talking to the U.S. before Washington lifts sanctions.
Photo: will oliver/iran's supreme leade/ShutterstockTrump administration officials said there is no detailed strategy for rapid negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran despite the president’s recent remarks that he would strike a quick agreement if he wins a second term.
President Trump’s pledge, which he has repeated publicly four times in the past five days, supposes that Iranian leaders would meet him at the negotiating table, a move they have publicly opposed since he withdrew the U.S. from the multination Iranian nuclear accord in 2018.
Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Iran for the past two years, Brian Hook, said last week he was resigning from the position, another signal that chances for a deal remain remote, administration officials said.
Instead, Mr. Trump’s assertion stems from thinking inside the administration that Tehran is holding off until it is clear whether he will serve another term. “They’re all waiting to see the election,” he said Monday, referring to Iran, China and North Korea.
Iran said the president’s recent remarks were viewed as political salesmanship instead of an indication that a deal was close.
“Even if Trump is elected for a second term, as long as it continues the policy of pressure on Iran, he will have no success in reaching an agreement,” said Ali Rabiei, an Iran government spokesman. “If Trump were serious about compensating for past mistakes, we would welcome that. But it seems like his recent claim has no goal beyond getting votes in the elections.”
White House communications director Alyssa Farah said the president’s goal was to deter Iran’s nuclear program. “After months of increasing escalations by the Iranians, the president took bold decisive action and reset the table for deterrence,” she said. “But as he’s said many times, he’s always willing to talk.”
Iran has tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since November, the United Nations atomic agency said in March, prompting warnings from weapons experts and diplomats that Tehran had slashed the time it would need to amass enough fuel for a nuclear weapon.
When the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers took effect in January 2016, U.S. officials estimated it would take at least a year for Iran to produce sufficient enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon if it broke out of the agreement.
Now, that “breakout time” has substantially shrunk to four months, said Olli Heinonen, a former senior official at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency now at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think-tank that studies national security and international peace.
A Saudi military spokesman last September displayed what he said were an Iranian cruise missile and drones used to attack a Saudi oil facility. The U.S. alleged Iran was behind it.
Photo: Amr Nabil/Associated PressMr. Trump raised the possibility of dealing with Iran “very quickly” in a second term during a news conference Friday while speaking about an intelligence report last week saying Iran sought to undermine U.S. democratic institutions and Mr. Trump ahead of the November election.
At a private fundraiser on Sunday, Mr. Trump told donors that, if re-elected, he “would have a deal with Iran within four weeks,” the Asbury Park Press reported. He repeated the claim during a news conference Monday and during a radio interview Tuesday.
“Here’s what’s going to happen: If I win, you’ll have a deal with Iran in the first month,” Mr. Trump said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show. “Because all they’re waiting for—and China, too—they’re hoping that I’m defeated. Because if I’m defeated, China will own the United States. And Iran will go back to a deal, even better than the first terrible deal.”
The Trump administration has said it would seek approval from the U.N. to extend a five-year embargo on sales of conventional weapons to Iran, which is set to expire in October. The request is expected to fail, a result that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said could trigger a snapback of sanctions in place before the Obama-era deal.
Asked for comment, the State Department referred to the president’s remarks, saying they spoke for themselves.
White House officials said a second term for Mr. Trump would force Iranians to choose between returning to the negotiating table or waiting four years for sanctions relief.
“President Trump has reasonably offered to negotiate with Iran many times,” said John Ullyot, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. “Unsurprisingly, Iran continues to miss this opportunity and fall back on its typical nuclear blackmail and destabilizing activities in the region in a futile attempt to extract concessions, all at the expense of the Iranian people. It would be wise for Iran to return to the negotiating table.”
The Trump administration has mounted what it calls a “maximum pressure” campaign toward Iran, aiming to alter the regime’s behavior through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. Key to this approach was the administration’s May 2018 withdrawal from the international nuclear agreement with Iran, which had been completed in 2015.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said he won’t consider talking to the U.S. before Washington lifts sanctions.
“They say you must give up your defense capabilities: You must give up your regional strength and your national power,” Mr. Khamenei said in a speech last month. “An honorable person who is interested in preserving the country’s interests will not give in to these demands. This is what negotiation means. This is the reason why I am against negotiating with the U.S.”
In the years since, the U.S. has tightened economic sanctions against Iran, adding major industries to its blacklist and declaring the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization.
The sanctions crippled the country’s metal, automotive, shipping, construction and aviation industries.
The U.S. blamed Iran for attacks last year on fuel tankers in the Gulf of Oman in June and against Saudi oil facilities in September. After strict sanctions choked off Iran’s oil sales, Tehran threatened to disrupt regional oil trade if its oil couldn’t reach global markets.
The attacks were seen by U.S. officials as a move by Iran to demonstrate the cost of the administration’s hard-line position.
—Courtney McBride contributed to this article.
Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com
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