“I say this to Iran, who’s listening very intently, ‘I would love to be able to make a great deal. A deal where you can get on with your lives’,” Trump told reporters in Washington.
“They cannot have one thing. They cannot have a nuclear weapon and if I think that they will have a nuclear weapon … I think that’s going to be very unfortunate for them,” he added.
The president said that while Iran can never have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances, he is willing to talk to his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian.
In 2015, Iran proved the peaceful nature of its nuclear program to the world by signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with six world powers.
However, the US’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.
In 2019, Iran started to roll back the limits it had accepted under the agreement after the other parties failed to live up to their commitments.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei issued an official fatwa (religious decree) clearly establishing that any form of acquisition, development, and use of nuclear weapons violate Islamic principles and are therefore forbidden.