Axios has newly revealed a key, explosive part of President Trump’s letter submitted to Iranian leadership, which was initially disclosed in the first week of March. The letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei included a two-month deadline for achieving another nuclear deal, according to several anonymous sources. It seems a come to the able again, or else!…type of proposal
Axios notes that “It isn’t clear whether the two month-clock begins from the time the letter was delivered or from when negotiations start.” The letter was first reported at the end of the first week of March, but the Iranians claimed they hadn’t received it up to days after that.
“But if Iran rejects Trump’s outreach and doesn’t negotiate, the chances of US or Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities would dramatically increase,” Axios continues.
Trump has spelled out the “or else” part in a Yemen-related Wednesday post on Truth Social…
After admitting that Iran has backed off of support for the Houthis at a moment the US is bombing Yemen, Trump is warning “they will be completely annihilated.” While the threat is being most directly aimed at the Houthis, the clear message is that the Iranians have been put on notice as well.
Lately the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described that the Islamic Republic’s current stockpile of 60% enriched uranium – if enriched to 90% – would be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.
Trump has recently brought back ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran, and has even this week advanced the possibility of cracking down on sanctions-busting Iranian oil exports on the high seas, using naval intervention. Clearly this is part of the big stick package of actions meant to push Tehran to the table.
An earlier Fox News interview in February marked the point at which Trump first laid out that Iran has two choices. “Everybody thinks Israel with our help or our approval will go in and bomb the hell out of them,” Trump had said at the time while discussing potential Israeli military action against Tehran.
“I would prefer that not happen. I’d much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal, supervise, check it, inspect it,” the president continued.
That’s when he made one of the more provocative and threatening comments: “There’s two ways to stopping them: With bombs or a written piece of paper,” he had previously said.
The US is now increasingly worried that given last year’s tit-for-tat exchange of major strikes with Israel, Tehran leaders are more incentivized than ever to secretly develop a nuke. However, the CIA has long assessed, even recently, that Iran’s leadership has not yet ordered the pursuit of a bomb. The Ayatollahs throughout the decades have also condemned atomic weapons as ‘unIslamic’.
Loading…
