Ahead of expected talks between the United States and Iran over the weekend, the State Department pushed back on the idea that the discussion would be a negotiation over Tehran’s nuclear program.
“This is a meeting that’s happening, right? On Saturday, there’s a meeting. There’s no negotiations,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday.
“This is a dynamic where the president has made very clear and certainly the secretary has made very clear that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” she said. “It’s touching base, yes. Again, it’s not a negotiation. It’s a meeting.”
However, Bruce and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt both emphasized that President Donald Trump is seeking to cut a deal with Tehran.
“When it comes to Iran, the president has reimposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian regime, and he’s made it very clear to Iran they have a choice to make: You can strike a deal with the president, you can negotiate, or there will be hell to pay,” Leavitt said.
Bruce confirmed that Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, will represent the Trump administration during the session. But beyond that, both the White House and the State Department have been tight-lipped concerning details about the planned talks, which Trump announced during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
Trump also asserted that the U.S. was already conducting direct diplomacy with Iran for the first time since 2018, when he exited an Obama-era nuclear deal with the country.
“We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later posted on X that the meeting Trump referenced would take place in Oman and that talks would be “indirect high-level talks.”
“It is as much an opportunity as it is a test,” Araghchi said.
On Tuesday, the White House and the State Department stood by the president’s initial description of the forthcoming conversations and rejected Iran’s characterization of the talks as indirect.
“That’s nice for the Iranians,” Bruce said of Araghchi’s comments. “I would refer back to the president of the United States, President Donald John Trump.”
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