President Trump announces that Iran wants to negotiate. What are the options for a military intervention?
Donald Trump. PHOTO: Pool/ABACA / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
American President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the Iranian regime is looking for dialogue, but he still left to plan the threat of military action against Iran with the deployment of an American naval force in the Gulf, reports AFP, quoted by Agerpres.
Meanwhile, arrests continued in Iran on Tuesday after the protests that rocked the Islamic Republic earlier this month. At least 41,880 people have been detained and thousands of protesters have been killed, according to the latest figures from the US-based non-governmental organization Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
This NGO, as well as other human rights organizations, continue to work on documenting the repression, an effort hampered by the general blocking of the Internet since January 8.
Donald Trump has warned that the US has “a large army near Iran. Bigger than it was in Venezuela”, referring to the US operations that led to the capture of the Venezuelan head of state, Nicolas Maduro, in early January.
But he added in an interview for the American website Axios: They “want to make an agreement. I know that. They called many times. They want to talk.”
Accompanied by warships, USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier arrived in the Middle East
“If they want to contact us and they know the conditions, then we will discuss,” a senior American official later said, according to Axios.
The site states that Donald Trump did not want to detail the options considered. Analysts estimate that it is the bombing of military sites or targeted attacks against Iranian leaders.
According to the New York Times, American intelligence services have repeatedly assured Donald Trump that Iranian power is “weakening” or even “reaching its weakest level” since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Influential Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham told the quoted daily that he had spoken with the president in recent days: “The goal is to end the regime.”
On the Iranian side, Tehran indicated that a channel of communication with the US had already been opened.
In a telephone conversation on Tuesday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an ally of the US, President Massoud Pezeshkian warned that “American threats are aimed at disrupting the security of the region and lead to nothing but instability.” Saudi Arabia assured Tehran in mid-January that it would not allow its territory to be used in the event of strikes against Iran.
