Donald Trump is warning Iran that their leaders better strike a deal within 24 hours or he’ll unleash new waves of strikes on the nation.
‘We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon,’ Trump told the New York Post after dispatching Vice President JD Vance to Pakistan to lead peace talks.
‘We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made – even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart,’ he said.
‘And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.’
The upcoming peace talks are expected to center on Trump’s demands that Iran surrender its stockpile of enriched uranium and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping.
Tehran, meanwhile, is pushing for immediate relief from US sanctions, continued control over the strait, and compensation for wartime damages.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf suggested on Friday that talks aren’t going well.
He indicated in a post to X that peace talks should not start as disputes over three-day-old ceasefire terms continue.
Qalibaf said two key measures previously agreed upon have yet to be carried out by the United States, including a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon and the release of Iran’s frozen assets.
On Thursday, Trump pressured Israel to slow down attacks on Lebanon as the strikes threatened to thwart peace talks with Iran.
The President admitted that he’d told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘to be sort of a little more low-key’ as Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff lead negotiations in Islamabad this weekend.
US officials are worried, however, that with the already fragile days old ceasefire deal between Washington and Tehran, Israel’s campaign in Lebanon could endanger those talks before they even get started.
According to the latest Daily Mail/JL Partners poll, American voters were ‘relieved’ that the President decided to take the off-ramp instead of escalating the war.
The survey found that 33 percent of voters view the deal as a good outcome for the United States, compared to 18 percent who see it as a bad one.
Another 28 percent of respondents said they feel neutral about the agreement, while 20 percent remain unsure, underscoring the public’s mixed but measured reaction.
The President’s rising unfavourability appears to have been driven in part by surging gas prices after the strait’s closure, with the national average climbing to $4.10 per gallon.
