- Trump discards European mediation efforts as useless.
- Israel is ‘winning’, so stopping attacks is difficult: president of the United States.
- “Two weeks window to avoid the answer.”
President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible US air attacks, which indicates that he could make a decision before the deadline of fifteen days that he established a day before.
Trump added that he was not willing to stop Israel attacking Iran because he was “winning” and was derogatory for European efforts to mediate the end of the conflict.
“I give them a period of time, and I would say that two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to attack Iran before that.
He added that the goal was to “see if people return to their senses.”
Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that “I would make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks” because there was a “substantial probability of negotiations” with Iran.
These comments had been widely seen as opening a two -week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers running to conversations with Tehran.
But his latest comments indicated that Trump could still make his decision before if he feels that there has been no progress to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Trump ruled out the conversations that the European powers Great Britain, France, Germany and the EU had Friday with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Geneva.
Europe ‘did not help’
“They didn’t help,” he said when he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, before a fundraising dinner at his nearby golf club.
“Iran doesn’t want to talk to Europe. They want to talk to us. Europe will not be able to help in this.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the conversations in Geneva that Tehran would not resume negotiations with the United States until Israel stopped his attacks.
But Trump was reluctant.
“It is very difficult to make that request right now,” Trump said.
“If someone is winning, it is a little more difficult to make that someone is losing, but we are ready, willing and capable, and we have been talking to Iran, and we will see what happens.”
Meanwhile, Trump doubled his claims that Iran is weeks of being able to produce a nuclear bomb, despite the divisions in his own administration about intelligence behind his evaluation.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump National Intelligence director, said in a report in March that Iran was not close to having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.
“She is wrong,” Trump said about Gabbard, an opponent for a long time of the foreign intervention of the United States whom Trump took the opportunity to coordinate the extensive community of US spies.
Iran says that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
‘450 missiles’
Since Israel launched its offensive on June 13, aimed at nuclear and military sites, but also reached residential areas, Iran has responded with barriers that Israeli authorities say they have killed at least 25 people.
A hospital in the Israeli port of Haifa reported 19 injured, including a person in serious condition, after the last Iranian save.
So far, more than 450 missiles have triggered the country, along with about 400 drones, according to the National Directorate of Public Diplomacy of Israel.
Iran said Sunday that Israeli attacks had killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear and civil scientists. He has not updated the toll since then.
An NGO based in the United States, the Human Rights news agency, provided a toll on Friday based on its sources and media reports, saying that at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians.
