US and Iran to hold ‘direct talks' this week, says Trump

Representatives for the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct extended diplomatic talks on Saturday, restarting a dialogue over the Iranian nuclear weapons program between the two nations.

- ANDREW FEINBERG JOHN BOWDEN

Donald Trump claimed that “direct talks” would occur between Washington and Tehran during an Oval Office press conference yesterday.

“We’re having direct talks with Iran ... it’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we'll see what can happen. And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or, frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it. So we're going to see if we can avoid it, but it's getting to be very dangerous territory. And hopefully those talks will be successful,” said Mr Trump.

He added that it was in Tehran’s “best interest” for the talks to be “successful”.

Asked to elaborate further on the announcement, Mr Trump said US and Iranian representatives would have “a very big meeting on Saturday” and contrasted the talks with previous negotiations in which the US went through intermediaries on account of the lack of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, having been formally severed since April 1980.

“Maybe a deal is going to be made that'd be great. That'd be ...really great for Iran, I can tell you that,” Mr Trump said. “But hopefully we're not going to have to get into that. We're meeting, very importantly, on Saturday, at almost the highest level, and we'll see how it works out."