US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not “capitulated” in the face of Washington’s military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated,’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t… I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated,” he said.
“Why, under this pressure, with the amount of seapower and naval power over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do’? And yet it’s sort of hard to get them to that place.”
The US envoy also confirmed in the interview that he had met with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah and a critic of the current authorities, who has not returned to the country since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy.
“I met him at the direction of the president,” Witkoff said, without providing further details.
“I think he’s strong for his country, cares about his country. But this is going to be about President Trump’s policies.”
US-based Pahlavi last week told a crowd in Munich that he was ready to lead the country to a “secular democratic future” after Trump said regime change would be best for the country.
Witkoff’s comments come after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a draft proposal for an agreement with Washington would be ready in a matter of days.
Trump said on Thursday that Iran had at most 15 days to make a deal on concerns starting with its nuclear program.
As talks between the two nations continued in Geneva, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Tuesday said that Trump would not succeed in destroying the Islamic republic.
Western countries accuse the Islamic Republic of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies, though it insists on its right to enrichment for civilian purposes.
Iran, for its part, is seeking to negotiate an end to sanctions that have proven to be a massive drag on its economy, which played a role in sparking anti-government protests in December.
“They’ve been enriching well beyond the number that you need for civil nuclear. It’s up to 60 percent (fissile purity),” Witkoff said. “They’re probably a week away from having industrial, industrial-grade bomb-making material, and that’s really dangerous.”
