US president Donald Trump told TheAtlantic magazine on Sunday that Iran's new leadership has offered to hold talks with him in the wake of the US-Israeli strikes on the country, and he has agreed to do so.
"They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them," Trump said in an interview with The Atlantic.
Trump could not say whether those talks would be held on Sunday or Monday. "They should have done it sooner," Trump said. "They could have made a deal. They should've done it sooner. They played too cute."
It was not immediately clear with whom Trump will negotiate. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader since 1989, was killed in the attack on Saturday. A three-member leadership council, which includes Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, has temporarily assumed the duties of the supreme leader. Israel's defense forces claim to have killed senior military leaders of Iran, including the defense minister and the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump argued the conflict's effects on oil markets will be less disruptive than some analysts have predicted, the magazine reported. "This could have been a huge price increase with respect to oil, if things went wrong," Trump said. "So we'll see what happens."
