The U.S. is expected to start another round of peace talks with Iran this week, President Donald Trump said Sunday, just one day after nixing an Iranian proposal aimed at ending the months-long conflict.
The comment marked a slight softening from Saturday, when Trump said his administration rejected new terms proposed to them by Iranian negotiators.
“They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make,” he told Axios in a phone call Sunday. “It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand.”
The prospect of renewed negotiations could offer a sliver of hope for a number of Republicans running in tight races, many of whom have recently called for a decisive end to the unpopular war before voters head to the polls in November.
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had held indirect negotiations with Iranian officials during the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week, but the two sides remain far from a compromise. Iran is focused on the U.S. naval blockade complicating shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway it commandeered at the start of the war, while the Trump administration insists its priority is concessions in Tehran’s nuclear program.
The indirect negotiations were also occurring against the backdrop of Trump’s speech made on the General Assembly floor, during which he wondered aloud if he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic.”
Trump has frequently hinted at new rounds of productive talks, virtually since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on the Middle Eastern nation in February.
Administration officials initially said the operation would last about six weeks, and have said numerous times that a resolution was imminent, only for the conflict to flare back up, forcing extended deployments of U.S. troops.
At the GOP’s midterm gathering in Texas earlier this month, Trump said Republican candidates shouldn’t expect the conflict to end before voters head to the polls in November.
“Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” Trump told reporters. “I think it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterm.”
He clarified that high oil prices, one of the GOP’s biggest weaknesses this election cycle, would immediately fall “as soon as we win the war with Iran,” indicating that a permanent ceasefire or treaty is still months away.
Some Republican candidates in tough races have decided not to wait that long.
GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, the party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, called for an “immediate” end to the war during a news conference Friday, while former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate hopeful in Michigan, turned on his initial support for the conflict in a new campaign advertisement released Monday.
“The war in Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers says in the ad, while standing in a grocery store.
Hinson and Rogers are running in close races — Hinson against state Rep. Josh Turek and Rogers against public health official Abdul El-Sayed — and high prices of daily essentials are set to be a major issue for voters in both states.
Axios’s report did not indicate if Trump gave an exact date for when talks might resume this week, but he did say the possibly of resumed strikes on Iran remains on the table.
“I am always thinking about it,” Trump told Axios.
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