By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump raised doubts on Monday about whether he would follow through on a threatened resumption of military strikes against Iran and said a deal with Tehran could happen.
Trump in recent weeks had hinted about renewing attacks on Iran after the US midterm elections on Tuesday. But after a speech at the Washington Reflecting Pool on Monday, he indicated he might be thinking otherwise.
Asked by reporters if he was considering striking Iran after the midterms, Trump replied “no.”
The Iran war is a leading cause of high gasoline prices that are weighing on voters and Trump is under pressure to end the conflict.
Iranian negotiators were in Doha on Sunday for a third consecutive day of talks with Qatari mediators aimed at pushing for a deal to end the war. Trump said on Monday he believed Iran wanted to make a deal and that such an agreement “could happen.”
Vice President JD Vance reported that there had been “a number of good conversations with the Iranians.”
“Look, the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We’re going to keep on working at it,” he said.
Trump stressed his bottom-line demand that Iran not possess a nuclear weapon.
“We’re not going to allow Iran ever to have a nuclear weapon, and they understand that. They’ve understood that and they’ve said it even recently,” Trump said.
“If we allowed Iran to have a nuclear weapon, this country could never function in the same way. The whole world would be a different place,” he said.
He insisted that the operation was not actually a war because “we’ve done very little fighting” recently after sweeping strikes months ago in which some Iranian leaders were killed.
“We wiped out their leaders – first level of leaders, the second level of leaders, and they’ve asked us, please stop doing that, and we will.”
Trump talked about Iran in a speech that was billed as his closing argument for voters ahead of US midterm elections on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh in Washington, Writing by Steve Holland, editing by Bhargav Acharya and Michelle Nichols )
