Trump: US to 'Deal Directly' With Iran

On Monday, during his White House meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump announced that there will be a high-level meeting between the United States and Iran on Saturday. It's unclear as to whether the president himself will be in the meeting or whether Iran has agreed to attend.

President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. will engage "directly" with Iran in a high-level meeting set to occur this coming Saturday.
"We have a very big meeting on Saturday, and we're dealing with them directly," Trump told reporters from the Oval Office while sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The announced meeting is the first known time the U.S. will directly engage with Iran since the previous Trump administration, when it withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018.

This presumes, of course, that Iran decides to attend.

The United States hasn't engaged directly with Iran since President Trump pulled us out of the aforementioned "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" in 2018, more commonly known as the "Iran nuclear deal." The withdrawal - which Joe Biden didn't reverse and, in all candor, he probably wasn't aware of - made sense when you consider that not only was it a bad deal for the United States, but it's a near-certainty that Iran never intended to honor their part of the bargain.

Earlier this year, the U.N. nuclear watchdog warned that Tehran had amassed enough near-weapons-grade enriched uranium to build five nuclear weapons if the uranium were further enriched.
"I think if the talks aren't successful with Iran… Iran is going to be in great danger," Trump said Monday.

Ay, there's the rub.

Trump Urges Americans Not to Become 'Panicans' As He Prepares for Netanyahu Meeting

Diplomacy with nations like Iran, all too often, is the art of saying "Nice doggie, nice doggie" until you can find a rock. It's not clear what kind of a rock it would take to convince the mullahs to give up their nuclear ambitions, unless it's the kind of hot rock that one might stuff in the front end of a Tomahawk cruise missile. It is this, though, that most of the civilized world agrees on - that Iran must not develop a nuclear weapon.

Countries with nuclear weapons are members of an elite club - the "Don't Mess With" club. They have a big nuclear stick, and that makes any potential attack on them an entirely different proposition than attacking, say, Afghanistan. If Iran develops a nuke, the adherents to an apocalyptic death cult that run that country may very well decide the logical thing to do would be to use it on Tel Aviv, Haifa, or New York. Iran, furthermore, doesn't have to "weaponize" a nuke by making it small enough to fit in a missile or a gravity bomb. They can make one the size of a cargo container, load it into a broken-down old freighter with a skeleton crew of the world's most ambitious suicide bombers, sail it along the coast to Tel Aviv or Haifa - or into New York harbor - and torch off the nuke.

President Trump hasn't announced the agenda for Saturday's meeting yet. But a reasonable person can easily conclude that the talks would necessarily have to encompass at least two topics: Iran's continued sponsorship of Islamic terrorism and their attempts to join the International Association of Nations That Can Nuke Us. The message from the United States should be clear: Stop doing both of these things, and no, you don't want to find out what the "or else" is.

On Saturday, we should know more.

Thanks to President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.

Help us report on Trump and Hegesth's successes as they make our military great again. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.