United States President Donald Trump said on Monday he was willing to meet Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani without preconditions to discuss how to improve ties between the two countries.

“I would meet with anybody,” he said, according to Reuters. “I believe in meetings...I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don’t know that they [Iran] are ready yet. I ended the Iran [nuclear] deal. It was a ridiculous deal. I do believe that they [Iran] will probably end up wanting to meet and I’m ready to meet any time that they want to.”

Advertisement

The White House clarified that even though the president is open to dialogue, this did not mean the US would lift sanctions or re-establish diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran.

Iran, however, responded that the way back to talks was for the US to return to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers. “Respecting the Iranian nation’s rights, reducing hostilities and returning to the nuclear deal are steps that can be taken to pave the bumpy road of talks between Iran and America,” Hamid Aboutalebi, an adviser to Rouhani, tweeted on Tuesday.

Trump’s comments come just a week after he threatened the country with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”. He was responding to Rouhani, who had warned Trump against inciting Tehran with hostile policies. Trump later said he was ready to make a “real deal” with Iran on its nuclear programme.

Advertisement

Trump in May announced that he was pulling the US out of a Barack Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it “decaying and rotten”. The US then said it will re-impose sanctions against Iran, and has asked some other countries to take similar action.

The nuclear deal, signed in 2015 by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany, the European Union and Iran, had lifted decades-old sanctions on Tehran on the promise that it would tone down its nuclear programme considerably.