President Donald Trump said Sunday Iran and Israel should come to the negotiating table even as the two nations continued to carry out missile strikes against one another, and both nations report casualties.
“Iran and Israel should make a deal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the two countries “will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make, in that case by using TRADE with the United States to bring reason, cohesion, and sanity into the talks with two excellent leaders who were able to quickly make a decision and stop!”
The U.S. helped to negotiate a deal between Pakistan and India in May after conflict erupted between the two nations after India blamed Pakistan for a terrorist attack in April that killed a group of mostly Indian tourists.
“President Trump has been clear since the inauguration that he prefers a diplomatic solution to war in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue,” Victoria Coates, vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
Trump gave Iran “every opportunity to come to the negotiating table and has been clear about American red lines,” Coates said. “Israel has allowed his timeline to play out and only acted when the President’s own 60-day deadline expired. President Trump continues to keep the opportunity to engage diplomatically open if the Iranians have the sense to take it.”
Unlike India and Pakistan, for now, neither Israel nor Iran is backing down from the conflict that began last week when Israel launched a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel continued to hit targets in Iran over the weekend, including strikes on Iran’s Defense Ministry headquarters in Tehran. Iranian state media confirmed on Sunday that Israeli strikes killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Kazemi and his deputy Hassan Mohaqiq.
Iranian state media said an Israeli drone struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, causing a fire and halting gas production.
Israel targeting Iran’s ballistic missile launch sites on Sunday, and the Israel Defense Forces said it “completed a wide-scale wave of strikes on numerous weapon production sites” in Tehran.
The IDF has repeatedly stated it is targeting Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure, and accuses Iran of targeting civilians.
While Israel’s Iron dome has intercepted most of the missiles Iran has fired, some have made landfall across Israel.
On Sunday, a missile struck the northern Israeli city of Haifa, the southern Israeli community of Zavdiel, and an apartment building in Bat Yam, just outside Tel Aviv. That strike left about 100 injured and at least 9 dead, according multiple reports.
The Iranian Ministry of Health says more than 220 people have been killed in Iran since the strikes began on Friday. In Israel, officials say more than a dozen people have been killed, including two children.
On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video in which he spoke to the American people and explained why Israel launched the preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
“Our enemy is your enemy,” Netanyahu said. “And by doing what we’re doing, we’re dealing with something that will threaten all of us sooner or later. Our victory will be your victory.”
Israeli officials reportedly asked the U.S. to get involved in the fight against Iran and aid in the effort to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, but the U.S. has not indicated plans to do so, and Trump has said multiple times that the U.S. has not been involved in Israel’s targeted strikes on Iran.
Israel’s strikes are reported to have damaged multiple Iranian nuclear sites, but Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment site is one of Iran’s major nuclear sites and is located underground in northern Iran. Eliminating the site, or even causing significant damage to it, would likely require assistance from the U.S.
Trump also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend and Trump said Putin “feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end.”
