{"id":147957,"date":"2026-02-28T00:28:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T00:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147957\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T00:28:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T00:28:20","slug":"trump-not-happy-with-iran-negotiations-drawn-out-war-in-middle-east-possible-if-he-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147957\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump ‘not happy’ with Iran negotiations \u2014 drawn-out war in Middle East possible if he attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump spent Friday repeatedly saying that he was \u201cnot happy\u201d about ongoing negotiations with Iran<\/a> and that he\u2019s nearing a decision on whether to launch a military attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a big decision to make. You know that. Not easy, it\u2019s not easy. We have a very big decision,\u201d Trump said during a political rally in Corpus Christi, Texas.<\/p>\n

The president is demanding that Tehran completely abandon nuclear enrichment, but US negotiators were rebuffed in Geneva on Thursday despite a massive American military buildup in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Trump said Friday he\u2019s \u201cnot happy\u201d about talks with Iran \u2014 while telling reporters that \u201cthere\u2019s always a risk\u201d that US airstrikes could result in another drawn-out war in the Middle East. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Trump sounded increasingly hardened going into the weekend \u2014 a period of time that he has favored for military operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a country that\u2019s been for 47 years blowing people\u2019s legs off, arms off, their face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been knocking out ships, killing people \u2014lots of people, not only Americans, lots of people. It\u2019s been terrible. 32,000 people killed over the last two, three months, protesters \u2014 32,000, that\u2019s some number of people, 32,000. They want to make a deal, but gotta make a deal that\u2019s meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, speaking with a large Venezuelan oil tanker as his backdrop \u2014 after capturing that nation\u2019s president, Nicolas Maduro, in a Jan. 3 military raid \u2014 told a gaggle of reporters that Iranian officials \u201cdon\u2019t want to say the key words, \u2018We\u2019re not going to have a nuclear weapon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow The Post\u2019s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to say, \u2018We\u2019re not going to have a nuclear weapon\u2019 and they just can\u2019t quite get there. They want to enrich a little bit. You don\u2019t have to enrich when you have that much oil. So I\u2019m not happy with the negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump insisted that \u201cwe haven\u2019t made a final decision\u201d on whether to follow through with a threatened military attack following the massive buildup of naval and air assets<\/a> within striking distance of Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not exactly happy with the way they\u2019re negotiating. They cannot have nuclear weapons,\u201d he reiterated.<\/p>\n

A reporter then asked Trump if there was \u201ca risk that strikes could turn into a long, drawn-out conflict in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI guess you could say there\u2019s always a risk,\u201d the president replied. \u201cYou know, when there\u2019s war, there\u2019s a risk in anything, both good and bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner represented the president Thursday in Switzerland and are preparing for follow-up talks Monday in Vienna.<\/p>\n

A source familiar with the talks said the US negotiators were disappointed by \u201cmultiple\u201d aspects of the Geneva talks, including Iran\u2019s insistence it has an \u201cinalienable right\u201d to enrich uranium.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to be in Israel<\/a> Monday and Tuesday for meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

Rubio announced Friday that Iran<\/a> has been designated a state sponsor of wrongful detention and urged Americans to \u201cleave immediately.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Oman's\u201cI\u2019m not happy with the fact that they\u2019re not willing to give us what we have to have. I\u2019m not thrilled with that. We\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d Trump told reporters \u2014 one day after Iranian diplomats rebuffed his demands to give up their nuclear program during talks in Geneva. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cNo American should travel to Iran for any reason,\u201d Rubio warned.<\/p>\n

Talks in Geneva got off to a bad start Thursday when Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, insisted his country had the right to enrich uranium \u2014 but all sides left saying progress was made.<\/p>\n

Omani foreign minister Sayyid Badr Al-busaidi, who is mediating negotiations, met Friday with Vice President JD Vance in Washington to discuss their status.<\/p>\n

In his first term, Trump abandoned former President Barack Obama\u2019s 2015 nuclear pact with Iran, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, arguing it lacked comprehensive safeguards to block atomic weapon development by the theocratic regime.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s use of gunboat diplomacy to back up his call for complete denuclearization follows his airstrikes in June 2025 on three Iranian nuclear facilities\u00a0 \u2014 Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan \u2014 in support of Israeli military action.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s acknowledgement that further action could spark a major war is significant because of his own record of slamming his predecessors for destabilizing the Mideast with regime-change interventions, often singling out President George W. Bush\u2019s 2003 decision to invade Iraq.<\/p>\n

But Trump quickly followed his remark Friday with examples of one-off strikes that lost no American lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had tremendous luck with myself \u2014 Soleimani, al Baghdadi, everything worked out \u2014 and then we do the Midnight Hammer and so many others. Everything\u2019s worked out, and we want to keep it that way,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re going to see. Look, it\u2019d be wonderful if they negotiate really in good conscience, good faith and conscience, but they are not getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump spent Friday repeatedly saying that he was \u201cnot happy\u201d about ongoing negotiations with Iran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,33505,14670,164,9,11,10,87,58,1076],"class_list":["post-147957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-donald-trump","tag-geneva","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-us-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}