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President Donald Trump is telling Iran there “is still time” to make a deal over the country’s nuclear program after Israel launched large attack on the country’s nuclear sites.

“There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump wrote on social media June 13 after the attacks. “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”

Israel hit Iranian nuclear sites and military bases and killed top generals and nuclear scientists in several waves of airstrikes. Iran responded by targeting Israel with a swarm of explosive drones; it was unclear how much, if any, damage they caused.

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‘They didn’t die of the flu’: Trump says Iran deal ‘hardliners’ are dead 

Trump told CNN anchor Dana Bash the U.S. supported Israel in its strikes on Iran. Bash said she spoke with the president on the phone briefly the morning of June 13. 

“Iran should have listened to me when I said − you know I gave them, I don’t know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,” Trump told her. 

“They should now come to the table to make a deal before it’s too late. It will be too late for them. You know the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners,” he added, without specifying who those “hardliners” are. 

The Trump administration has been negotiating with Iran over the country’s nuclear program, with the aim of preventing Tehran from producing a nuclear weapon. 

Bash said she asked Trump if the people he “was dealing with” died as a result of Israel’s June 12 attack. 

“They didn’t die of the flu,” he said. “They didn’t die of Covid.”

-Savannah Kuchar

The Trump administration has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program with the goal of preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear bomb. Although Iran insists its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes only, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, recently concluded that Iran was very close to reaching the 90% uranium enrichment level required to build a nuclear weapon.

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump said in his post. “I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.”

The Israel Defense Forces said more than 200 of its fighter jets struck dozens of targets in Iran June 13 as part of a wave of attacks. The IDF said it successfully “damaged” an underground area of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, a district in central Iran, that contained a “multi-story enrichment hall with centrifuges, electrical rooms and additional supporting infrastructure.”

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF hit additional targets “at the heart” of the Islamic Republic’s programs for nuclear weaponization and enrichment, as well as its ballistic missile program. Netanyahu added that “Iran’s leading nuclear scientists” were also targets, and that the IDF’s attacks will continue for “as many days as it takes.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei confirmed several of his nation’s senior military commanders and nuclear scientists were killed in Israel’s attacks, which struck parts of Iran’s capital Tehran. Khamenei also warned Israel had “prepared a bitter fate for itself.”

Trump is meeting with the National Security Council on June 13.

Trump said June 12 that he didn’t want Israel to attack Iran while he’s actively negotiating an agreement that could prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“As long as I think there is an agreement, I don’t want them going in, because I think that would blow it. Might help it, actually. But it also could blow it,” Trump told reporters during a White House event.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, Davis Winkie, Francesca Chambers, Jennifer Borresen