(The Center Square) — As negotiations to end the Iran war continue, President Donald Trump says one thing is certain: the U.S. won’t let the nation have a nuclear weapon.
President Donald Trump responds to a question from The Center Square’s White House reporter Sarah Roderick-Fitch about possible accommodations in negotiations with Iran. Trump says the U.S. “cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” warning the consequences would extend far beyond the Middle East.
“Right now we are negotiating and we’ll see, but we are going to get it one way or the other,” the president said from the Oval Office on Thursday. “They're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
“You will have a nuclear war in the Middle East and that war will come here. That war will go to Europe,” he continued, “And we cannot let that happen and it won’t happen. It’s not going to happen. That’s more important than anything else. I can’t think of anything more important than we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and we won’t.”
Trump made the comments after The Center Square asked for clarification on Vice President JD Vance’s earlier statements about uncertainty around a future deal.
"It's not sometimes totally clear what the negotiating position of the team is, and I don't know if that's sometimes bad communication, if that's bad faith," Vance said on Tuesday. "It's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what it is that the Iranians want to accomplish out of the negotiation."
He said, however, that he knows Iranian leaders understand they cannot have a nuclear weapon.
"The Iranians recognize that a nuclear weapon is the red line for the United States of America, that they've internalized that, but we're not going to know until we're actually putting pen to paper on signing a deal," Vance said. "It's ultimately up to the Iranians whether they are willing to meet us."
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