By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump met with his top national security aides on Tuesday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program ahead of a second meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials on Saturday, sources said.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, a session currently scheduled to be held in Oman. Trump spoke to the sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, about Oman’s mediation role between Washington and Tehran.
A White House official confirmed the White House Situation Room meeting on Iran and said the location was not unusual since Trump gets briefed there regularly to take advantage of the chamber’s secure setting.
A second source briefed on the meeting said Trump and his top aides discussed the Iran talks and next steps. U.S. officials have been working on a framework for a potential nuclear deal.
Trump has threatened military action against Iran if it does not give up its nuclear program while also stressing the need for diplomacy and negotiations.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump’s bottom line in the talks, which included an initial session last Saturday, is he wanted to use negotiations to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Trump and the Omani leader also discussed ongoing U.S. operations against Yemen’s Houthis, she said.
“The maximum pressure campaign on Iran continues,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “The president has made it clear he wants to see dialogue and discussion with Iran, while making his directive about Iran never being able to obtain a nuclear weapon quite clear.”
She added that he had “emphasized” this directive during the call with Sultan Haitham.
Both sides described last weekend’s U.S.-Iran talks in Oman as positive.
Trump has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, after he ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s nuclear program has leaped forward since then. The two countries held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but made little, if any progress.
Iran’s clerical rulers have publicly said that demands such as dismantling the country’s peaceful nuclear program or its conventional missile capabilities were off the table.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Deepa Babington, Don Durfee and Himani Sarkar)
