President Donald Trump on Monday said he has little interest in whether Iran continues negotiations with the U.S. after Tehran claimed to have cut off communications with Washington over Israeli attacks on their Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.
In an interview with CNBC following reports that Iran had decided to suspend participation in the ongoing talks, he told the cable network: “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly.”
“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” Trump said.
He added that the long-running negotiations had “started to get very boring.”
He also told NBC News earlier in the day that the U.S. should “go silent” in the talks because “we have been talking too much.”
But hours later, he appeared to walk back his prior comments to the television networks by posting on Truth Social that the talks were ongoing and moving quickly.
Talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he said.
The president’s inexplicably contradictory comments came not long after Iran’s state-affiliated news agency Tasnim said that Iran's negotiating team would cease exchanging messages with the United States through mediators over attacks on Lebanon.
A statement shared with the outlet said there’d be “no talks until Iran’s demands on cessation of Israeli operations in Lebanon and Gaza are met.”
Trump also told CNBC he’d be speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an update on “what’s going on with Lebanon” and later posted on Truth Social that the Israeli leader had assured him that “there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”
He added that Hezbollah had “agreed that all shooting will stop” following a call between “highly-placed representatives” of the group and himself.
The report of Iran’s pullback from talks led oil prices to spike after a weekend lull following what appeared to be progress in ending the three-month-old conflict last week.
But Trump told CNBC he wasn’t concerned about the oil price levels that have caused his approval rating to drop inversely with the price of gasoline in the U.S.
“I think the oil will be dropping like a rock in the very near, you know, the very near distance,” he said. before adding that he was in no hurry to resume negotiations with Tehran.
“If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time,” he said.
