Trump ‘Not Happy’ With Iran Talks, but Says He Remains Undecided on Strikes

President Trump said he had not made a final decision about whether to order military action against Iran.

President Trump said Friday that he was “not happy” about the state of negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons, but he cautioned that he had not made a final decision about whether to launch a second U.S. military conflict in Iran in less than a year.

“I’m not happy with the fact that they’re not willing to give us what we have to have,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Washington, referring to U.S. demands that Iran dismantle its nuclear program.

He said that he would “love not to use force” but that “sometimes you have to.”

For weeks, Mr. Trump has been weighing strikes on a range of targets in Iran, including military and nuclear sites. The United States has positioned a massive force in the Middle East to prepare for potential orders, and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Friday issued a written directive to its workers that if they wanted to leave the country, they “should do so TODAY.”

Still, Mr. Trump has done little to sell a potential attack to the American people, and his military objective remains unclear.

Any action would come around eight months after the United States dropped bombs on Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities. The president declared that the attack had “obliterated” Iran’s capabilities, but in recent days, he and his aides have said that Iran restarted its nuclear program and had enough nuclear material to build a bomb within days.

U.S. officials said that there was not evidence that Iran had made active efforts to resume enriching uranium or trying to build a mechanism to detonate a bomb.

Some officials in the region are trying to persuade Mr. Trump to hold off. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who has been mediating the talks between American and Iranian representatives, met with Vice President JD Vance on Friday, and later said the two had discussed a proposal that could place “a peace deal within our reach.” Mr. Vance’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.

But Mr. Trump continued on Friday to express a much more negative view of the status of the talks.

“I’d rather do it the peaceful way, but they’re very difficult people,” he said during an event in Corpus Christi, Texas. “I want to tell you that. They’re very dangerous people, very difficult people.”

In an interview with CBS News, Mr. Albusaidi described an offer from the Iranians that bore a close resemblance to the nuclear accord the country struck a decade ago with the Obama administration. Iran had largely complied with the agreement, but Mr. Trump pulled out of it in 2018, calling it “the worst deal in history.”

Mr. Albusaidi said the new proposal would allow Iran to enrich uranium, but not stockpile it. Instead, the country would ship it out. By eliminating stockpiles, he said, it would guarantee that Iran “will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb.”

But it falls short of the administration’s demand for “zero enrichment.” And because Iran would continue to enrich, it would have the infrastructure needed to produce nuclear weapons fuel if it ever decided to “break out” of the agreement and race for a weapon.

Administration officials seem unlikely to accept the proposal, based on Mr. Trump’s statements on Friday.

Mr. Albusaidi said he thought it would take three months or so to negotiate the details.

But Mr. Trump appears to be working with a far shorter time frame, and is highly sensitive to the charge that he is getting something better than the Obama administration negotiated over roughly three years.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote in an email to embassy staff on Friday that those who wanted to should leave immediately.

“There is no need to panic,” he added, “but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.”

The State Department increased the travel warning to Israel for U.S. citizens to Level 3: “reconsider travel.” The department also announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to visit Israel on Monday and Tuesday, but that he would not bring journalists, as would be customary.

The U.S. military buildup now includes dozens of refueling tankers rushed to the region by U.S. Central Command, more than 50 additional fighter jets, and two aircraft carrier strike groups, complete with their accompanying destroyers, cruisers and submarines, U.S. officials said.

The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford left Souda Bay, Greece on Thursday and was expected to soon arrive off the coast of Israel, where it would become part of the array of warships and military hardware that Mr. Trump has deployed for possible strikes on Iran, according to military officials and ship tracking sites.

The Ford’s journey has been particularly eventful, as it is joining Mr. Trump’s so-called Mideast “armada” fresh from a monthslong deployment in the Caribbean, where the carrier took part in Mr. Trump’s Venezuela operation.

The second aircraft carrier is the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which is now in the Arabian Sea.

The buildup suggests a number of possible Iranian targets, including Iran’s nuclear sites, short- and medium-range missiles and their launch sites, and other military targets, such as the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Mr. Trump traveled on Friday to Texas to deliver a speech on energy and then continued to Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend the weekend. The president on Saturday is expected to attend a meeting and high-dollar dinner for MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to him. He will return to Washington on Sunday.

Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington, Natan Odenheimer from Tel Aviv and David M. Halbfinger from Jerusalem.

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