Donald Trump said he was in the ‘final stages’ of peace talks but added things could get ‘nasty,’ while Iran called the idea of forcing them to surrender ‘an illusion.’ The President continued to keep things on a knife’s edge with Iran, as the US headed toward three months since the military started striking the Middle Eastern nation. ‘We’ll either have a deal or we’re going to do some things that are a little bit nasty but hopefully that won’t happen,’ he said, speaking at Joint Base Andrews Wednesday. He added that, ‘We’re in the final stages of Iran. We’ll see what happens.’ Trump reiterated later on Wednesday that the end of the conflict was within reach.
Willing to Wait
‘It could go very quickly, or a few days, it could be a few days, but it could go very quickly,’ he said after he gave the commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy. He described the conclusion as being ‘very right on the borderline,’ saying ‘believe me, if we don’t get the right answers, it goes very quickly.’ ‘We’re all ready to go. We have to get the right answers. It would have to be a complete 100% good answers.’ But, he said ‘hopefully those people will make a deal’ and added that he was willing to wait in order to save lives. ‘If I can save people from getting killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it is a great thing to do,’ Trump noted.
An Illusion of Surrender
Meanwhile Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that his country remains open to talks in a social media post. ‘Iran has consistently honored its commitments and explored every avenue to avert war; all paths remain open from our side,’ he wrote. However, he also warned that they would not be brought to heel by their enemies. ‘Forcing Iran to surrender through coercion is nothing but an illusion. Mutual respect in diplomacy is far wiser, safer, and more sustainable than war.’ ‘It’s fine, he’ll do whatever I want him to do, he’s a very good man. Don’t forget, he was a wartime prime minister and he’s not treated right in Israel in my opinion,’ Trump said.
Trump also quipped that his approval rating in Israel is at 99 percent and that he might try to run for prime minister next. ‘Maybe after I do this, I’ll go to Israel, run for prime minister.’ Trump and Netanyahu allegedly clashed over striking Iran in a ‘dramatic’ overnight phone call, hours after a failed plot to topple Tehran’s regime in the war’s opening days was exposed. The call was described as ‘lengthy and dramatic,’ according to Israel’s Channel 12. The Israeli outlet noted that Netanyahu increasingly doubts further negotiations with Tehran will yield a peace deal and wants to resume military strikes. Trump, meanwhile, wants to push harder for an agreement in which Iran abandons its nuclear weapons program before any return to war.
The discussion came hours after the New York Times revealed that Israel, with Trump’s approval, went into the war with an ‘audacious’ plan to install hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes. The plot collapsed on day one when Ahmadinejad was wounded by an Israeli strike on his Tehran home meant to free him from house arrest, and he hasn’t been seen since. Ahmadinejad, who had fallen out with the Ayatollah, was known during his 2005 to 2013 presidency for calling to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’ He also backed Tehran’s nuclear program, and violently crushed civilian dissent. ‘The failed plans for Ahmadinejad just further proves that there is no good leader within the current ranks of their government. There is no Delcy Rodriguez in Iran,’ a US official involved in the US-Iran negotiations told the Daily Mail. A close associate of Ahmadinejad told the New York Times that the US wanted the former Iranian president to ‘play a very important role’ in the country’s leadership.
The US viewed him as a potential parallel to Delcy Rodriguez, who took power in Venezuela after US forces seized Nicolas Maduro and has since worked closely with the Trump administration. Ahmadinejad believed that the strike was an attempt to free him, and that Washington viewed him as capable of leading Iran, according to the associate. The strike on his property destroyed a security outpost near Ahmadinejad’s home. Days later news outlets reported that the former Iranian president had survived the bombing but that his ‘bodyguards’ were killed. The bodyguards were, in fact, members of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, tasked with protecting Ahmadinejad but also holding him under house arrest. Following their deaths from the Israeli strike, Ahmadinejad became ‘disillusioned’ with the regime-change plan and cut off communication with western intelligence, according to the Times. Israeli strikes on the war’s first day killed Ayatollah Khamenei at his Tehran compound and wiped out a meeting of senior Iranian officials. Some of the officials killed in the Israeli strike had been identified by the White House as more willing to negotiate with the US than the current hardline regime.
It remains unclear how exactly Israel and the US planned to install Ahmadinejad to power after freeing him from house arrest. Trump claims the Iran war’s objectives are narrowly focused on eliminating Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, seizing its uranium enrichment stockpile, and dismantling the regime’s ballistic missiles. But the revelation of the US-Israeli plan to install Ahmadinejad undercuts that line and suggests they had also hoped to put more pliable leadership in Tehran. The New York Times previously reported that shortly prior to launching the war, Trump’s cabinet warned the President that killing Khamenei would not spark regime change. CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the idea ‘farcical’ and Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed it as ‘[expletive].’ Netanyahu had assured Trump in a private February 11 briefing that the war could topple Tehran’s leadership, an assessment Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine later told the President Israel had ‘oversold.’ The current state of the war suggests the hardline Revolutionary Guard has tightened its grip on Iran as peace talks with the US remain stalled. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries a one-fifth of the world’s oil, has been shut for months, driving up consumer and gas prices in the US.
