US President Donald Trump on Sunday night pushed back against CNN following its reports criticizing his administration's diplomatic negotiations with Iran.
In a post published to Truth Social, the President disputed CNN’s characterization of the memorandum of understanding being negotiated with Iran.
"Fake News CNN said today, routinely, that my Iran Nuclear Deal doesn’t talk about Nuclear, when actually it states, very clearly, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon," Trump wrote.
According to the president, the preliminary text places a substantial emphasis on restricting the Islamic Republic's non-conventional capabilities. He asserted that the documentation goes beyond a generalized framework to lay out expansive guidelines regarding atomic material.
"It then goes on, in very strong and lengthy detail, to discuss various other aspects of Nuclear. In fact, that’s what most of the agreement is about," Trump stated in his online post.
Trump also expressed deep skepticism about CNN’s future prospects under its current corporate leadership.
"CNN, and so many others in the Fake News Media, is a Low Ratings disaster. Even with new ownership, it is unlikely to ever get better!!!" he wrote.
Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran is preparing to submit a fresh round of modifications to a preliminary agreement with Washington following Trump’s demand for stricter conditions in the text.
The media outlet, which maintains close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and hard-line factions within the Iranian government, reported that the indirect negotiation process remains active.
The Iranian report follows an Axios report which said that Trump has requested several targeted modifications to the preliminary diplomatic accord hammered out by American and Iranian negotiators.
The directives were issued during a high-stakes meeting inside the White House Situation Room on Friday, according to the report.
In its original draft, the memorandum of understanding bound Iran to a generalized commitment to forgo the pursuit of a nuclear weapon, but lacked concrete concessions beyond that vow. The existing framework outlines a 60-day diplomatic window to negotiate subsequent nuclear restrictions and corresponding American sanctions relief. The immediate priorities for those future talks were slated to be the disposal of Iran's enriched uranium reserves and caps on future refinement.
The president is now actively seeking to front-load and refine those specific parameters, said the sources cited by Axios.
Trump said in an interview with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, which aired on Fox News on Saturday night that the US will get what it wants from Iran.
Trump added that he is in no hurry to reach a deal with Iran and once again stressed that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
“We've defeated their military, essentially defeated their military. I would rather get a deal because we can open the strait immediately upon signing. The one guarantee that I have to have is that there will be no nuclear weapons," he stressed.