Trump says US and Iranian officials will talk next week as ceasefire holds

United Arab Emirates, DUBAI (AP) Despite Tehran’s insistence that it will not give up its nuclear program, the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran seemed to be holding on Wednesday as US President Donald Trump said that US and Iranian officials will speak next week, raising cautious hopes for a longer-term peace.

At a NATO conference on Tuesday, the 12th day of the conflict, Trump, who assisted in negotiating the ceasefire, told reporters he was not very interested in resuming talks with Iran, claiming that U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. After its attack over the weekend, an Iranian official earlier in the day questioned if the United States could be trusted.

Trump remarked, “I don’t know, we might sign an agreement.” In my opinion, the conflict is over because they fought.

Although U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has stated that direct and indirect communication has occurred between the two nations, Iran has not recognized any discussions scheduled for next week. Israel’s attack on Iran delayed a sixth session of U.S.-Iranian talks that were supposed to take place in Oman earlier this month.

Trump had earlier declared that the truce was going great and that Iran would not get a bomb or enrich itself.

However, Iran has made it clear that it would not abandon its nuclear program. Its parliament voted to expedite a plan that would essentially halt the nation’s collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog that has been keeping an eye on the program for years, highlighting the difficult road ahead.

Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf chastised the IAEA before to the vote for failing to even appear to denounce the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday.

Because of this, Qalibaf informed parliamentarians, Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will proceed more quickly and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will halt collaboration with the IAEA until nuclear facility security is guaranteed.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, said he has written to Iran about starting nuclear facility inspections again. Iran claims to have transferred its highly enriched uranium before the U.S. strikes, among other things, and Grossi stated that his inspectors must reevaluate the nation’s stocks.

“We must go back,” he said. We must participate.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his optimism that Tehran will return to the negotiating table. His nation was a party to the 2015 agreement with Iran that limited its nuclear program, but it started to fall apart after Trump withdrew the United States from it during his first term.

U.S. intelligence services have determined that Tehran is not actively pursuing a weapon, and Iran has long said that its nuclear program is peaceful. But according to Israeli leaders, Iran could quickly put together a nuclear weapon.

Although Israel has never admitted it, it is generally accepted that it is the sole Middle Eastern nation possessing nuclear weapons.

Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has been set back by many years, according to the Israel Atomic Energy Commission’s assessment. It provided no proof to support its assertion.

Trump said that the U.S. strikes, which targeted three Iranian nuclear sites, totally and totally destroyed the nation’s nuclear program. Trump sneered and claimed that it would take years to restore Iran’s nuclear program when a U.S. intelligence analysis revealed that it had only been set back a few months.

Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that the American B-2 bombers’ deployment of bunker-buster bombs had caused substantial damage.

He refused to elaborate when he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that “there is no doubt that our nuclear installations have been severely damaged.”

Given that the bill in parliament only discusses suspending, not terminating, collaboration with the IAEA, he seemed to imply that Iran might not permanently bar the agency’s inspectors. Additionally, he maintained that Iran had the right to develop a nuclear energy program.

He stated that Iran is committed to protecting that right at all costs.

Late on Tuesday, Witkoff stated on Fox News that Iran’s demand for negotiations that Israel halt its campaign had been met and that Israel and the United States had succeeded in their goal of completely destroying Iran’s enrichment capacity.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” he remarked. Nobody is firing at one another. It’s finished.

Grossi stated that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were well known, but he was unable to estimate the extent of the damage.

He said that both the industrial capability and the technical expertise were present. Nobody can dispute that, so we must cooperate with them.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions, an Israeli official said that the ceasefire deal with Iran was only a “quiet for quiet” pact that would not advance any understanding of Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump is now seeking a comprehensive peace deal that goes beyond the truce, Witkoff said Fox News.

Witkoff added that the talks were encouraging and that we are optimistic that a lasting peace deal may be reached. “We are already speaking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors,” he said.

Although Iran was theoretically open to negotiations, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, claimed that Washington’s attacks on nuclear sites had sabotaged diplomacy and that national security came first.

According to him, we must determine whether the other parties are sincere when they discuss diplomacy or if it is just another one of their strategies to cause additional issues for my nation and the area.

Iran’s closest allies, China and Russia, praised the ceasefire and expressed their hope that it would last.

According to Grossi, Iran and the international community ought to take advantage of the ceasefire in order to find a lasting diplomatic solution.

He added that despite the negative effects of military combat, there is now a chance, an opportunity. We must not pass up that chance.

David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s espionage organization, congratulated the CIA for being a crucial partner and his own officers for working for months and years to accomplish what was initially unthinkable in a rare video that was made public.

In a Facebook post that included the footage, the agency stated, “We assisted the Air Force in striking the Iranian nuclear project, establishing aerial superiority in Iranian skies, and reducing the missile threat thanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies, and operational capabilities beyond imagination.”

Israeli airstrikes also targeted Iran’s top military leadership and other locations linked to its ruling theocracy during the war.

Tehran reported 5,332 injuries and 606 fatalities in Iran on Tuesday. According to data provided Wednesday by the Human Rights Activists group in Washington, Israeli strikes on Iran may have killed at least 1,054 people and injured 4,476 more.

According to the group, which has released comprehensive death tolls from Iran’s several uprisings, 318 security forces and 417 civilians were among the dead.

According to officials, at least 28 people were murdered and over 1,000 were injured in Israel.

Iran has put six inmates to death in the last two weeks on suspicion of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.

This report was written by Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Sylvie Corbet in The Hague, Netherlands; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel; and Josef Federman and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem.