US has no immediate plans to strike Iran but is ‘locked and loaded,’ Donald Trump says
US President Donald Trump said that the United States has no immediate plan to renew strikes against Iran during an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.
On ongoing indirect negotiations with Tehran, Trump claimed, “We seem to be getting everything we want.”
He added that the US military is “locked and loaded” if strikes are necessary, but noted that there may be no reason to reignite military action.
Trump’s comments came after a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that Iran and the US are far from reaching a deal to end the war.
US Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that there had been “a number of good conversations with the Iranians” after officials from the Islamic regime met with Qatari mediators in Doha for a third consecutive day of talks.
“Look, the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement,” he said. “We’re going to keep on working at it.”
Vance sent a letter to Iran on Wednesday about negotiations, according to The Wall Street Journal, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called it a “positive step” toward resuming talks between the two countries in comments to Al Jazeera on Friday.
Asher Smith contributed to this report.
