Witkoff confirms meeting with exiled Iranian royal amid regime change remarks
\n WASHINGTON
\nUS envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not \u201ccapitulated\u201d in the face of Washington\u2019s military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal.
\nThe United States and Iran this week resumed Oman-mediated talks in Geneva aimed at averting the possibility of military action, after Washington dispatched two aircraft carriers, jets and weaponry to the region to back its warnings.
\nIn a Fox News interview with Trump\u2019s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Witkoff said the president was \u201ccurious\u201d about Iran\u2019s position after he had warned them of severe consequences in the event they failed to strike a deal.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to use the word \u2018frustrated,\u2019 because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he\u2019s curious as to why they haven\u2019t… I don\u2019t want to use the word \u2018capitulated,\u2019 but why they haven\u2019t capitulated,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWhy, under this pressure, with the amount of seapower and naval power over there, why haven\u2019t they come to us and said, \u2018We profess we don\u2019t want a weapon, so here\u2019s what we\u2019re prepared to do\u2019? And yet it\u2019s sort of hard to get them to that place.\u201d
\nThe US envoy also confirmed in the interview that he had met with Reza Pahlavi, who has not returned to Iran since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy.
\n\u201cI met him at the direction of the president,\u201d he said, without providing further details.
\nUS-based Pahlavi last week told a crowd in Munich that he was ready to lead the country to a \u201csecular democratic future\u201d after Trump said regime change would be best for the country.
\nWitkoff\u2019s comments come after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a draft proposal for an agreement with Washington would be ready in a matter of days.
\nTrump said on Thursday that Iran had at most 15 days to make a deal on concerns starting with its nuclear program.
\nAs talks between the two nations continued in Geneva, Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday said that Trump would not succeed in destroying the Islamic republic.
\nWestern countries accuse the Islamic Republic of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies, though it insists on its right to enrichment for civilian purposes.
\nIran, for its part, is seeking to negotiate an end to sanctions that have proven to be a massive drag on its economy, which played a role in sparking anti-government protests in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Witkoff confirms meeting with exiled Iranian royal amid regime change remarks WASHINGTON US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not \u201ccapitulated\u201d in the face of Washington\u2019s military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal. The United States and Iran this week resumed Oman-mediated talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-532900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n