US President ‘seriously considering’ launching new strikes against Iran

Washington, May 23: US President Donald Trump is “seriously considering” launching fresh strikes against Iran if last-minute negotiations do not result in a peace deal, US media outlet Axios reported on Friday.
It said that Trump met with a senior national security team in the morning to discuss the war on Iran even as Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir visited Tehran and was joined by a delegation from Qatar in a last-minute bid to hammer out a deal.
President Trump convened a meeting with his senior national security team regarding the war with Iran on Friday morning, two US officials told Axios.
Trump is seriously considering launching new strikes against Iran barring a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations, sources who have spoken directly with the president say.
Munir is expected to meet on Saturday with Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a key player in the Iranian decision-making process.
Axios reported that a US official briefed on the diplomatic efforts described the negotiations as “agonising” with drafts “going back and forth every day” without much progress.
The Friday morning meeting at the White House with Trump was attended by Vice President J D Vance, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and other officials.
“Iran is dying to make a deal. We’ll see what happens. But we hit them hard, and we had no choice because Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They cannot have it,” Trump said at an event at the White House on Friday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Sweden that “slight progress” was made during talks with Iran.
Rubio, who was in Sweden for the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting, said he did not want to exaggerate the progress in talks, saying there had been “a little bit of movement, and that’s good”.
Trump visited New York for a political rally ahead of the mid-term elections in November. Earlier, he had planned to spend the weekend at the Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey, but cancelled it and returned to the White House on Friday evening.
Trump also wrote on his Truth Social account that he was not going to attend his son Don Jr.’s wedding this weekend due to “circumstances pertaining to government and my love for the United States of America.” “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, DC, at the White House during this important period of time,” he wrote.
A source close to Trump and a second source with knowledge of the situation told Axios that Trump had grown increasingly frustrated about the negotiations with Iran over the past several days. On Tuesday, he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wanted to give diplomacy another chance, but by Thursday night, he was leaning toward ordering a strike, the two sources told Axios. A source close to Trump said the president has raised the possibility of a final “decisive” major military operation, after which he could declare victory and end the war. (PTI)