Trump Shifts Stance: More Time for Diplomacy Over War Talk

President Donald Trump will wait as much as two weeks to decide whether to attack Iran’s nuclear program , the White House said Thursday, dialing back rhetoric about Iran having missed its window to reach a deal.

In a statement read by his press secretary, Trump said he believes there is now a “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran.

White House officials are watching European talks with Iran scheduled for Friday as Trump suggested that he would wait to let discussions unfold.

In recent days, Trump’s comments on Iran have been bellicose, including a social media post Monday warning Iranians to “immediately evacuate Tehran,” the nation’s capital with 10 million residents, and a statement Wednesday that he was “out of patience.”

Thursday’s statement stood in sharp contrast: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” said the president’s statement, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read to reporters.

Leavitt confirmed to The Washington Post that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Mideast, has continued “correspondence” with Iranian officials in recent days, and she repeatedly stressed Trump’s desire for a negotiated solution.

But at a briefing for reporters, she also emphasized that Trump has not ruled out a U.S. strike against Iran.

“The president has made it clear he always wants to pursue diplomacy, but believe me, the president is unafraid to use strength if necessary,” she said.

The main goal of a U.S. attack, if Trump ordered one, would be to destroy Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow, which is buried deep under a mountain. Israel does not have weapons capable of penetrating the site, but the U.S. has bombs that may be able to do so.

Leavitt said U.S. officials believe Iran could pose an “existential threat” to the world by developing a bomb within “weeks” if its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered a nuclear weapon to be assembled. Most experts in the field say that Iran could assemble enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb within a few weeks but that turning it into a functional weapon would require many months, perhaps as much as a year.

Trump’s assertion of a two-week deadline follows a long-standing pattern. On multiple topics over years, he has said he would make a decision in two weeks. Often that period comes and goes without any final action. Trump most recently set a public two-week deadline in late May in response to reporters asking when he would be able to determine how serious Russian President Vladimir Putin was about ending the war with Ukraine.

Leavitt declined to say whether any plans are underway for Iranians to visit the White House, a possibility Trump speculated about Wednesday.

For now, the next step in the diplomatic process will be a meeting scheduled for Friday in Geneva between foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany and the European Union and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi. The meeting is being coordinated with Washington, according to four officials familiar with the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday in Washington before heading to Geneva for those talks. In a statement after the meeting, Lammy said, “The situation in the Middle East remains perilous” but “a window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”

Leavitt confirmed that Witkoff is not scheduled to attend the negotiating session.

The Europeans are seeking to de-escalate the conflict that has spiraled since Israel launched military strikes against Iran a week ago, one official added. Friday’s talks are expected to try to persuade Tehran to give guarantees that its nuclear activities would be restricted only for civilian purposes, the official said.

A second diplomatic official involved in the negotiations said the countries will seek to broker a “take it or leave it deal” with Iran, in exchange for “regime survival.”

Earlier talks considered allowing Iran to continue a limited amount of uranium enrichment for civilian energy purposes, but the requirement now would be for “zero enrichment,” the official said.

Trump has made a total surrender of Iran’s enrichment capability his central demand. Tehran has previously rejected that idea, insisting that under international treaties, it has the right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian use. But administration officials believe that the pounding Iran has received from days of Israeli bombing — and the prospect that the U.S. could join the attack — may have changed that position.

Leavitt on Thursday repeated Trump’s insistence that any deal would have to result in “no enrichment of uranium.” European negotiators have suggested that a deal could include having an international team of experts enter Iran and dismantle its enrichment facilities.

“The planet in which they thought they’d be negotiating against 3.76 percent enrichment has disappeared,” the second diplomatic official said, referring to a level of enrichment needed for civilian fuel. “This is most likely to be something of an ultimatum.”

Friday’s meeting could be the start of a more direct European role in mediating the current conflict and in broader Iran nuclear talks from which they have been sidelined under Trump.

France, Germany and Britain were closely involved in negotiations that yielded the Obama administration’s 2015 deal to contain Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief — an agreement Trump abandoned in his first term.

At a news conference Thursday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France has expressed readiness “to participate in negotiations aiming to obtain from Iran a durable rollback of its nuclear program and its ballistic program.”

“In the exchanges we were able to have with Iranian authorities, their message has been relatively clear,” Barrot said. “There is a will to resume talks, including with the Americans on condition that a ceasefire can be reached” to end the Israeli attacks, he said.

The three countries’ foreign ministers held a call with Araghchi this week as the Israel-Iran attacks intensified and the Trump administration weighed joining Israel in bombing Iran. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, joined that call and spoke with Rubio the same day.

The U.S. getting involved would “drag the regions into a broader conflict,” Kallas said this week. “And that is in nobody’s interest.”

Polls show the American public is skeptical about a potential U.S. military strike.

A poll conducted Wednesday by The Washington Post found that Americans oppose airstrikes against Iran by a 20 percentage-point margin — 45 percent to 25 percent — with 30 percent saying they are unsure.

Two-thirds of Democrats oppose airstrikes against Iran, but Republicans are less united in their views on the issue. Forty-seven percent of Republicans said they supported strikes, 24 percent opposed them, and 29 percent had no opinion, the poll found. Independents leaned against the strikes by about a 2-to-1 margin, with more than a third unsure.

Leavitt said Trump was not making his decision based on concerns raised by prominent conservative influencers, such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, or by European counterparts.

“The president hears all voices across the country, and he makes decisions based on his instincts,” she said.