President Donald Trump announced yesterday that the United States would resume direct negotiations with Iran. In a meeting at the Oval Office with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump said:

We’re having direct talks with Iran. … It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen. And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious; and the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it. So we’re going to see if we can avoid it. But it’s getting to be very dangerous territory.

“Doing the obvious” is a reference to a military option. Trump has been suggesting this may happen for several months.

Last month, the U.S. launched an air campaign against Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen. It also sent multiple B-2 bombers, one of the U.S.’s most advanced stealth aircraft, to a military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The B-2’s range allows it to reach Iran from Diego Garcia while carrying 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs. Many analysts interpret the moves as saber-rattling against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed indirect talks are underway. “Iran and the United States will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect high-level talks,” he posted on X today “It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently ruled out direct talks with America. But “three Iranian officials” confirmed to the New York Times this could change. According to those sources, “Ayatollah Khamenei had shifted his position to potentially allow direct talks. The officials said that if Saturday’s indirect talks are respectful and productive, then direct talks may happen.”

This follows several Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite militias claiming they are prepared to disarm if it meant deescalation with the U.S., Reuters reported. Analysts dispute how genuine the call is, but such a signal would never happen without Iran’s approval. This suggests Iran is trying to tell President Trump it is ready for dialogue.

Axios reported that Trump has chosen Steve Witkoff, the man who pressured Netanyahu to accept the January ceasefire with Hamas, to lead the negotiations.

In his first term, President Trump pulled out of President Barack Obama’s 2016 nuclear deal with Iran. He saw that the deal’s loopholes and inability to be enforced allowed Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and make it rich along the way. Trump specified he would like a current deal to denuclearize Iran “the way it was done in Libya.” Under Muammar Qadhafi, Libya shipped out its entire nuclear infrastructure to the U.S. in 2003. Libya’s nuclear program was still in its infancy and undeveloped. Iran’s program, in contrast, has everything it needs to produce a nuclear weapon if the leadership so chose.

Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed reluctant to speak during the meeting. Regarding Iran, he said: “If it can be done diplomatically in a full way the way that it was done in Libya I think that would be a good thing. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”

Even if the talks lead nowhere, this shows how much priority President Trump has given to making a new nuclear deal. The ayatollah’s signals, as with the Iraqi militias’, may suggest he is willing to play along.

We wrote in our April Trumpet issue:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not care if his people starve under foreign sanctions. For him and his regime, arming the world’s most powerful Islamist state with the world’s most powerful weapon is more than an ambition; it’s a religious obligation. The regime’s worldview is predicated on perpetual war with America and the West, as stated starkly by the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

The only motivation the Iranians have to sign a paper limiting their nuclear program is if it enables them to continue their perpetual war more successfully than an open dash toward reaching their nuclear ambitions. That is why Khamenei signed the Obama deal.

President Trump pulled America out of the 2016 deal because he could see its flaws. But it appears he does not realize how committed Iran is to its course and how it would take advantage of any agreement signed with the West.

Time will tell what fruit Mr. Trump’s overtures bear. But Iran’s track record shows that any deal Iran agrees to has ulterior motives.

“President Trump also says he wants to do a deal with Iran over its nuclear program,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “Does Donald Trump Know the Way to Peace?” “If he does, that will be yet another deal with the devil! Any deal will expand Iran’s ability to spread its evil terror across the Middle East. It threatens to unleash more ‘October 7’ massacres.”

Whatever happens between President Trump and Iran, expect it to be history-making—for better or for worse.

To learn more about the flaw in Trump’s approach to peacemaking, read “Does Donald Trump Know the Way to Peace?”