Trump hints at meeting Mojtaba Khamenei, claims Iran agreed to abandon nuclear weapon

US President Donald Trump, in a New York Post podcast, said that he is looking forward to meeting Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and that Khamenei and other leaders "get along very well”. He also claimed that Iran has agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons but conceded that they could “change their mind”.

“I did have to say we have to do something about Iran, because regardless of how well we’re doing [economically] we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” said Trump in The New York Post's “Pod Force One”. Trump then said that Iran has agreed to forsake nuclear ambitions, when pressed again on the point Trump said, “Oh yeah, they’ve agreed to that. I mean, now they can change their mind, but that was one of the things they’ve had to agree, they’ve agreed to that. That was the big thing.” However Iran's Foreign Ministry did not respond to Trump's interview.

Talking about Iran's Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, Trump said that they “have a lot of respect for him”. He confirmed that Mojtaba Khamenei is involved in the talks. “They say he is giving approval, because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time. His father and then him, I guess it’s a succession. But we seem to be getting along quite well,” said Trump to the New York Post.

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“I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him… If you believe the stories, he’s missing a lot of different parts,” said Trump about Mojtaba, who had not been publicly spotted since the US-Israeli strike on Iran, which resulted in the death of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump's choice of words has changed drastically as he dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei previously as a “lightweight” and “unacceptable” choice to run Iran.

The US-Israel war on Iran is approaching 100 days, and the ceasefire is in a fragile situation with repeated violations from both sides. Iran has attacked Kuwait and Bahrain, and the US fired on oil tankers heading towards Iran.