Iran reportedly reached out to the U.S. a day after the war began to discuss terms to end it, but U.S. officials don't think either party is currently ready to take an offramp, according to a new report.
The New York Times detailed that Tehran made the offer to the CIA through another country's spy agency. Israeli officials have also been urging the Trump administration to ignore the offer, which Washington doesn't consider to be serious either.
President Donald Trump has said it is "too late" for talks after considering that negotiations in Geneva last week reached a dead end.
The outlet noted that any offer that could be considered by the Trump administration will likely have to include a pledge to abandon or drastically reduce its nuclear program, as well as its ballistic missile production and support for proxy groups in the region, including Hezbollah.
Trump has suggested he could follow the same footprint he did in Venezuela after capturing and replacing authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year.
"What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario," Trump told the NYT on Sunday. "Leaders can be picked." He noted that "everybody's kept their job except for two people," suggesting a similar approach could apply in Iran following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At other points in the interview, however, Trump suggested that Iran's military forces might "surrender to the people," or that Iranians themselves could overthrow the existing system. "That's going to be up to them," he said. He also claimed to have "three very good choices" in mind for Iran's leadership but declined to name them. However, several top leaders have been killed over the past days.
The Venezuela model cited by Trump emerged after Delcy Rodríguez, a top official during the Maduro regime, assumed interim leadership following his capture. Since then, Rodríguez has publicly called Trump a "friend" and urged him to lift sanctions and end what she described as a blockade. Trump, on his part, referred to Venezuela as a "new friend and partner" in his State of the Union address last week, and announced that the United States had received "more than 80 million barrels" of Venezuelan oil.
Elsewhere in the report, the outlet cast doubt on whether Iran is willing to reach such a deal despite the outreach. Moreover, the conflict could extend to a point where the administration could be forced to end the attack as a result of the economic and political fallout.
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