President Trump said he’d “be honored” to meet with Iran’s supreme leader to make a deal to end the conflict.
“I don’t want to meet, but if I did meet, I’d be honored to meet him. I’d like to see if we make a deal. But if we made a deal, it’s possible that I would meet him? I’d be okay with that,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office.
Asked if he believes Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei would want to speak with him, considering Operation Epic Fury killed his father and family members, Trump said he knows he is probably not the Ayatollah’s “favorite person.”
But the president said he believes Iran’s new supreme leader is “a professional.”
“I don’t know. He’s probably professional. In some circles, he has a very good reputation, actually,” Trump said.
Trump is facing warnings from foes and allies alike that he’s getting boxed in on the Iran war, a conflict he sold as a brief military incursion but that has since settled into a holding pattern.
It’s been a week since U.S. and Iranian negotiators reached a tentative agreement to extend the ceasefire in the conflict by 60 days and start a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program that required Trump’s signoff.
But Trump has called for unspecified changes to the agreement and Iranian officials — perhaps calculating that the Republican president is reluctant to restart the bombardment after burning through key weapons systems — are showing no signs they’ll give in to new demands.
A series of strikes by the U.S. and Iran this week has raised fresh concerns that the ceasefire could collapse. But Trump on Thursday reiterated that he’s certain his administration is on track to successfully wrap up the conflict.
“We’re going to win one way or another,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump also told reporters he’ll “handle” Cuba when the war with Iran is done.
“We’ll take care of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And as soon as that’s done on our way back we’ll make a little brief stop,” Trump said.
“We’ll take care of it,” he added, insisting the Cuban “people want us there so badly.”
