Trump won’t unfreeze Iran’s assets until a peace deal
US President Donald Trump stated in an interview that he would not unfreeze Iranian assets or lift any sanctions prior to the establishment of a peace deal. Trump stated he would contemplate those measures following the completion of an agreement. “Comes after,” he stated. “Yeah. If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking. Yeah.” Trump also stated that he was not insisting on Lebanon’s inclusion in a short-term agreement with Tehran. “I think they’d like to see it, but I’m not demanding,” Trump said in the interview recorded on Friday.
US and Israeli forces initiated strikes on Iran on February 28. The Trump administration has been actively pursuing negotiations for a potential peace deal for several weeks now. “We’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them,” Trump told. The US president also expressed his openness to engage in dialogue with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has remained out of the public eye since sustaining injuries from US strikes at the onset of the conflict. “I don’t want to say whether or not I know where he is, but there’s a good probability that I do,” Trump said.
Top officials from the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, assert that a temporary ceasefire agreement remains intact despite recent US strikes on Iran. Rubio informed lawmakers last week that these actions are defensive in nature.
