US President Donald Trump has told associates in recent days that he wants to avoid a protracted war in Iran and that he hopes to bring the conflict to an end in the coming weeks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Nearly one month into the war, the president has privately informed advisers he thinks the conflict is in its final stages, urging them to stick to the four-to-six-week timeline he has outlined publicly, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the newspaper.
White House officials planned a mid-May summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing with the expectation that the war would be concluded before the meeting begins, some of the people said.
One source told The Wall Street Journal that Trump told an associate that the war was distracting from his other priorities.
The president appears ready to shift to his next big challenge, another person who spoke to him recently said, though Trump didn’t say what that might be.
“President Trump is extraordinarily skilled at multi-tasking and works on multiple challenges at the same time," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The President is laser focused on fully achieving the military objectives against the terrorist Iranian regime. The president’s sole focus is always victory."
One idea that Trump has floated to advisers, according to The Wall Street Journal, is securing US access to some of Iran’s oil as part of any deal to end the war, according to a senior administration official. The official said there isn’t any current planning under way for that outcome.
Trump is willing to order US troops on Iranian soil, but is reluctant to do so, in part because it could upend his goal of a speedier end to the conflict. He is concerned that the number of US troops killed or injured in the operation could rise if the war continues, US officials told The Wall Street Journal.
On Monday, Trump 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 Wednesday night, Trump said during a speech in Washington that the Iranians want to make a deal but are afraid to admit it.
“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," the President stated.
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.’"