White House weighs Iran’s nuclear-talks offer as Trump leans toward strikes
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. WASHINGTON—The White House is weighing a last-ditch Iranian offer to engage in diplomacy over curbing its nuclear program even as President Trump currently leans toward authorizing fresh military strikes on Iran, U.S. officials say.
Some senior administration aides, led by Vice President JD Vance, are urging Trump to try diplomacy before retaliating against Iran for killing protesters during a two-week uprising over a flailing economy and regime repression, the officials said. Speaking Sunday to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said that Tehran messaged Washington a day earlier that it was willing to enter negotiations over its yearslong nuclear program, which the U.S. seeks to limit.
Trump said “a meeting is being set up" though the U.S. was still looking at “very strong options" he could authorize before discussions. Trump hasn’t made a final decision on what he will do, according to officials, and will meet with senior aides Tuesday to determine his approach.
The options could include ordering military strikes on regime sites or launching cyberattacks, approving new sanctions and boosting antiregime accounts online. Some officials have voiced concerns that U.S. military strikes could fuel the regime’s propaganda that the U.S.
and Israel are secretly orchestrating the protests. The protests, which began in late December and escalated since Jan. 8 with major demonstrators in key cities, are a potentially existential challenge to the regime in Iran that came to power during its own 1979 revolution.
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