US President Donald Trump on Wednesday mocked Iran’s leadership after it denied holding talks with the US, saying that the Iranians want to make a deal but are afraid to admit it.
Speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) annual fundraising dinner in Washington, Trump said, “I've never seen anything like we're doing in the Middle East with Iran. And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it, because they figure they'll be killed by their own people. They're also afraid they'll be killed by us."
He quipped, “There's never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran. We listen to some of the things they say, we hear them very clearly. They say, ‘I don't want it, we'd like to make you the next supreme leader. No thank you, I don't want it.’"
Trump’s comments come two days after he announced a five-day pause on “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure" to allow diplomatic negotiations between Tehran and Washington, adding that the US is reaching out to “very solid" figures inside Iran.
Subsequent reports indicated that Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was representing Iran in the talks with the US, but Ghalibaf denied that any talks were taking place at all.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the US sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East.
Officials who spoke with the newspaper on condition of anonymity shared some of the plan’s broad outlines, saying that it addresses Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
The plan also discusses maritime routes, one of the officials said. Since the beginning of the war, Iran has effectively blocked most Western ships from safely passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway in and out of the Persian Gulf, cutting the global supply of oil and natural gas, and sending the prices soaring.
On Wednesday, Iran signaled that it rejects the plan proposed by the US. According to reports in Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, Tehran has returned to insisting on baseline conditions that Washington had previously rejected outright, even before the outbreak of the war.