US President Donald Trump says he paused military strikes on Iran to give diplomacy another chance but is prepared to authorize another major attack if the talks fail.
“We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don’t work out, we will go back to very strong military action,” Trump tells the Axios news site.
Trump insists that he’s not giving much time to talks, even though he has said that before and has allowed them to drag out an additional week.
“Either it goes fast or not at all,” he claims.
Explaining his decision to hold off on strikes — which was widely reported to have been made due to warnings from his generals that they were no longer effective and because the US is running out of missile interceptors — Trump says: “All of the people that deal with Iran asked me: ‘Don’t fire.'”
Asked what he will discuss during tomorrow’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he says: “I am going to talk to Bibi about the fact that if I weren’t president, Iran would have had nuclear weapons by now and Israel would have been destroyed.”
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