US President Donald Trump has claimed that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iran urged Washington to halt planned military action against Tehran in favour of diplomacy, saying negotiations with Iran are set to begin today.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the United States had been prepared to launch a large-scale attack before requests from regional partners prompted a change in course.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was asked to by Saudi Arabia, by UAE and by Qatar and by Iran. We were all set to go just about at this time right now and it would have been a massive attack. We were all set to go. But when the allies ask you to call it off, you got to sort of say, \u2018well, let\u2019s see\u2019. And the reason they ask is, I think there\u2019s a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Washington was now shifting its focus to diplomacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon, and we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also described the scale of the military operation that had been under consideration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had an attack that would been the biggest attack since World War Two, and it would have been disastrous for them, and they didn\u2019t want us to do it. And frankly, Saudi Arabia didn\u2019t want it either. They thought that a deal is imminent.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the US president, the proposed agreement would focus on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the deal is imminent, having to do with the Hormuz strait. And ultimately the denuclearisation of Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump further said he had directly consulted Saudi Arabia\u2019s leadership before deciding to pursue negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked them, I asked Saudi Arabia, the king, the crown prince. I said, \u2018what would you rather do, would you rather have us do this or not\u2019. They said, \u2018we would much prefer a deal as opposed to an attack\u2019, because you don\u2019t know where these attacks lead. I mean, will they be flooded with people pouring into their country and disaster? A lot of bad things can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has claimed that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iran urged Washington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[158,39434,10057,5171,102,56944,236,7997,13005,1897,30491,48,2206,16251,62074,101,21033,41683,20238,65945,65946,224,23474,65947,17699,82],"class_list":["post-233812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-strait-of-hormuz","tag-breaking-news","tag-centcom-iran","tag-donald-trump-iran","tag-gulf-tensions","tag-hormuz","tag-iran-attack-today","tag-iran-latest-news","tag-iran-military","tag-iran-missile-attack","tag-iran-retaliation","tag-iran-us-latest-news","tag-israel-iran-conflict","tag-live-updates","tag-middle-east-conflict-live","tag-middle-east-war-live","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-trump-iran-strikes","tag-trump-latest-news","tag-us-airstrikes-iran","tag-us-iran-conflict-live-updates","tag-us-iran-live-blog","tag-us-iran-war","tag-us-military-iran","tag-us-response-iran","tag-us-iran-war-live","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}