Trump says he’s ‘very close’ to Iran deal but seeks stricter nuclear terms; hails ‘bravery’ of ‘badly injured’ Mojtaba Khamenei

US President Donald Trump says that Washington is “very close” to reaching a deal with Iran but is currently seeking additional provisions to ensure Tehran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Trump also says in the interview that Iran’s wartime-elected supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei was seriously wounded during the war, while praising what he describes as the leader’s “bravery.”

Trump tells NBC that the two sides are “very close” to signing a deal, but indicates he is seeking additional restrictions to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by any means, saying, “We have a couple of points. They don’t even seem like big points… They’ve conceded the fact that they will not have nuclear weapons. We had a clause in there that [they] will not develop nuclear weapons. And everybody was very happy with it except me.”

Trump says he wants an additional clause barring Iran from purchasing or otherwise acquiring a nuclear weapon: “And I said, ‘Well, what happens if they, not develop, but they go out and purchase, they acquire? I want to put the word, ‘if they buy, purchase or acquire’… You know, you’ve got to have that in there, too, because that’s not developing. So, they don’t have the right to develop or purchase, acquire or buy.”

He says that Washington will retrieve and destroy Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium if the sides reach an agreement, while warning that the US would further degrade Iran’s capabilities and secure the material by force if talks collapse.

“If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on-site or whether we take it off-site,” Trump says regarding Iran’s enriched uranium, adding, “if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”

The president told reporters Thursday that American forces could remove Iran’s enriched uranium even without a deal, but argued that “there’s no reason to” because the regime currently cannot access the stockpile. He also revealed that he considered sending US troops to retrieve the buried uranium stockpile at the outset of the war, but decided against it because of the military risks involved.

He tells NBC that he intends to keep US troops deployed in the region until “completion” of the talks.

Trump says Iran’s leadership is now “more rational” and “very smart” following the assassination of several senior officials during the war.

He says Mojtaba Khamenei is “pretty badly injured. So there’s a certain bravery there. A lot of people, if they were injured that badly, they wouldn’t be talking about, you know, ‘How are we doing with the United States?’ They’d have other things on their mind.”

Trump declines to clarify whether he knows Khamenei’s exact location or whether the leader is in Iran, saying, “I don’t want to say whether or not I know where he is… But there’s a good probability that I do.”