{"id":512859,"date":"2026-03-02T00:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T00:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/512859\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T00:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T00:48:08","slug":"trump-says-iran-leadership-agrees-to-talks-after-us-and-israel-strike-tehran-us-israel-war-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/512859\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says Iran leadership agrees to talks after US and Israel strike Tehran | US-Israel war on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran\u2019s political leadership have agreed to talks, a day after the US and Israel began to target<\/a> the country\u2019s military and political infrastructure, killing the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several top officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,\u201d Trump told a reporter<\/a> for the Atlantic magazine on Sunday. \u201cThey should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments were some of the first from the president since he announced on Truth Social in the early morning hours on Saturday that the US had begun \u201cmajor combat operations in Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump did not disclose whether any conversation would take place Sunday or next week, telling the Atlantic\u2019s Michael Scherer: \u201cI can\u2019t tell you that\u201d and noting that some of the Iranian officials who had been involved in discussions before the strikes had been killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big \u2013 that was a big hit,\u201d he said. \u201cThey should have done it sooner \u2026 they could have made a deal. They should\u2019ve done it sooner. They played too cute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decisive strikes on Iran\u2019s theocratic leadership and military, he implied, were entirely justified. \u201cPeople have wanted to do it for 47 years. They\u2019ve killed people for 47 years, and now it\u2019s reversed on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also told Fox News\u2019 White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich on Sunday that 48 leaders have been killed in the strikes and told CNBC that US military operations in Iran<\/a> are \u201cahead of schedule\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s moving along. It\u2019s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,\u201d he was quoted as saying in an interview with a Fox News reporter. \u201cIt\u2019s moving along rapidly. Nobody can believe the success we\u2019re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it\u2019s moving along rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also spoke by phone to Nikki Schwab, a former contributor to the New York Post\u2019s Page Six gossip column who is now at the Daily Mail, telling her<\/a> that the military campaign in Iran is projected to be \u201ca four-week process\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a fourth phone interview on Sunday, after three US service member deaths and five casualties were announced, Trump told NBC News<\/a>: \u201cWe have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it\u2019s going to be a great deal for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that call, Trump also used one of his favorite claims, saying that the US military<\/a> operation was \u201cahead of schedule\u201d, and added: \u201cWhen we get 48 leaders, that\u2019s a big event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what he hoped the outcome of the American military operation in Iran, he said: \u201cThere are many outcomes that are good. Number one is decapitating them, getting rid of their whole group of killers and thugs. And there are many, many outcomes. We could do the short version or the longer version.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if strikes on Iran would be suspended amid negotiations that he earlier said had been agreed, the president said, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d, before adding that he would consider a pause \u201cif they can satisfy us\u201d but that \u201cthey haven\u2019t been able to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief interviews on Sunday came after the president told the Washington Post<\/a> soon after the strikes: \u201cAll I want is freedom for the people. I want a safe nation, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was noncommittal in his latest comments to the Atlantic about whether the US would prolong a US bombing campaign to support a popular uprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to look at the situation at the time it happens,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t give an answer to that question.\u201d He reportedly expressed confidence in a successful public uprising, noting celebrations in Iran and and among Iranian expats in the US.<\/p>\n

But he cautioned: \u201cKnowing it\u2019s very dangerous, knowing I\u2019ve told everybody to stay in place \u2013 I think it\u2019s a very dangerous place right now. The people over there are shouting in the streets with happiness, but at the same time, there are a lot of bombs coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reuters contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran\u2019s political leadership have agreed to talks, a day after the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-512859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}