President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Iran was negotiating with the United States, even as the Islamic republic’s army chief warned Washington against launching military strikes.
“(Iran is) talking to us, and we’ll see if we can do something; otherwise we’ll see what happens… We have a big fleet heading out there,” he told Fox News.
“They are negotiating,” Trump added.
He also said that US allies in the region were not being informed of plans for potential strikes for security reasons, following his threats to intervene in Iran after a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
“Well, we can’t tell them the plan. If I told them the plan, it would be almost as bad as telling you the plan—it could be worse, actually,” he said.
The United States has deployed a naval strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran’s coast.
