“We had a meeting with them on Saturday. We have another meeting scheduled next Saturday. I said, ‘That’s a long time.’ You know, that’s a long time. So I think they might be tapping us along,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
He added Iran “has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi told state media after the Saturday meeting that the two sides “got very close” to reaching a framework for negotiations. Trump has threatened military strikes as a consequence of failure, and Tehran has warned any attack on it would drag the US into a broader Middle Eastern conflict.
“I think they’re tapping us along because they were so used to dealing with stupid people in this country,” Trump said of Iran’s proposed timeline for talks.
He reiterated that negotiations have “got to go fast” because Iran is “fairly close to having” a nuclear weapon.
“And if we have to do something very harsh, we’ll do it,” the president added.
