Trump says Iran negotiating with US

Washington: US President Donald Trump said that Iran is negotiating with the United States.

“The plan is that (Iran is) talking to us, and we’ll see if we can do something. Otherwise, we’ll see what happens,” Trump told a Fox News correspondent.

He added that “the last time they negotiated, we had to take out their nuclear. It didn’t work, you know. Then we took it out a different way, and we’ll see what happens.”

“We have a big fleet heading out there, bigger than we had — and still have, actually — in Venezuela,” Trump said.

Trump also said the United States could not share military plans with Gulf allies while negotiating with Iran.

“We can’t tell them the plan. If I told them the plan, it would be almost as bad as telling you the plan — it could be worse, actually,” Trump said, responding to reports that Gulf allies remain in the dark about potential US intervention plans involving Iran.

Earlier, A senior Iranian security official said that a structure for talks with the United States is being set up.

“The formation of a structure for negotiations is progressing,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani wrote on social media platform X, without elaborating.

Larijani’s remarks followed his meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, which focused on economic cooperation and significant regional and international issues.

The remarks also came amid rising tensions between Iran and the United States, with the latter bolstering its military presence in the Middle East.

Trump said a “massive armada,” led by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and larger than the fleet sent to Venezuela, is heading toward Iran. The deployment reflects the heightened risk of confrontation, even as Washington publicly holds out the possibility of diplomacy.

IANS