A senior Trump administration official says the US is “sitting by the phone” to hear from Iran, but it has yet to receive any message suggesting Tehran is willing to accept Donald Trump’s overtures for direct talks.
The US has heard no message yet from Iran, but “we’re sitting by the phone,” the senior official, who declined to be identified, told a small group of reporters on Friday.
Back on May 9, Trump publicly appealed to Iran to call him amid heightened tensions.
On the same day, CNN reported that the White House has contacted Swiss authorities to share a telephone number with Iran in hopes that Tehran will contact Trump.
The call for talks came four days after John Bolton, the hawkish US national security advisor, declared the US was sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran.
The move, he said, is aimed at sending a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran that “any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
Bolton said the decision was “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”
Trump, however, later ordered his administration to avoid a military confrontation with Iran, The New York Times and Reuters reported Friday.
During a Wednesday morning meeting in the Situation Room, Trump sent a message to his hawkish aides that he does not want the US pressure campaign against Iran to explode into an open conflict.
“Trump was firm in saying he did not want a military clash with the Iranians,” read the paper citing five senior officials who described the administration’s internal debate over Iran.
The report cited anonymous officials informed on the matter as saying that Trump had privately expressed concern that some of his advisers, such as John Bolton, were pushing for war.
