Live Update From the Liveblog of Saturday, March 22, 2025

Witkoff says Trump trying to build trust with Iran in order to prevent an armed conflict

By AFP 22nd March 2025, 4:26 am

Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff says the US president is trying to head off armed conflict with Iran by building trust with Tehran in remarks broadcast.

In an interview with online news anchor Tucker Carlson published on X, Witkoff says Trump’s recent letter to the Islamic Republic had not been intended as a threat.

Witkoff, defending Trump’s outreach, tells Carlson that Trump has the military upper hand and it would be more natural for the Iranians to push for a diplomatic solution.

“Instead, it’s him doing that,” he says of the letter.

“It roughly said: ‘I’m a president of peace. That’s what I want. There’s no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk,’” Witkoff says.

“We should create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization of your nuclear material… because the alternative is not a very good alternative.”

Witkoff says that US discussions with Iran continue through “back channels, through multiple countries and multiple conduits.”

Trump, he says, is “open to an opportunity to clean it all up with Iran, where they come back to the world and be a great nation once again… He wants to build trust with them.”