Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the US president ‘wants peace’ but will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Washington, DC – United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem says she delivered a message from President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the two countries should be aligned on how to approach Iran.
Noem, who concluded a visit to Israel on Monday, told Fox News that her talks with Netanyahu were “candid and direct”. Her comments come days after US and Iranian officials held their fifth round of nuclear talks in Rome.
“President Trump specifically sent me here to have a conversation with the prime minister about how those negotiations are going and how important it is that we stay united and let this process play out,” she said.
On Sunday, Trump suggested that the talks were progressing well.
“We’ve had some very, very good talks with Iran,” the US president told reporters. “And I don’t know if I’ll be telling you anything good or bad over the next two days, but I have a feeling I might be telling you something good.”
Last week, CNN reported, citing unidentified US officials, that Israel was preparing for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite the US-led talks.
Iran has promised to respond forcefully to any Israeli attack, and accused Netanyahu of working to undermine US diplomacy.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi said last week that the Israeli prime minister is “desperate to dictate what the US can and cannot do”.
Israel has been sceptical about the nuclear negotiations, and Netanyahu has been claiming for years that Iran is on the cusp of acquiring a nuclear bomb. Israeli officials portray Iran – which backs regional groups engaged in armed struggle against Israel – as a major threat.
On Monday, Noem said that the US understands that Netanyahu does not trust Iran.
“The message to the American people is: We have a president that wants peace, but also a president that will not tolerate nuclear Iran capability in the future. They will not be able to get a nuclear weapon, and this president will not allow it,” she said.
“But he also wants this prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to be on the same page with him.”
A major sticking point in the talks has been whether Iran would be allowed to enrich its own uranium.
US officials have said they want Iran not just to scale back its nuclear programme, but also to completely stop enriching uranium – a position that Tehran has said is a nonstarter.
Enrichment is the process of altering the uranium atom to create nuclear fuel.
Iranian officials say enrichment for civilian purposes is a sovereign right that is not prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Tehran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
During his first term, in 2018, Trump nixed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had seen Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against its economy.
Since then, the US has been piling sanctions on Iran. Tehran has responded by escalating its nuclear programme.
On Monday, Iran ruled out temporarily suspending uranium enrichment to secure an interim deal with the US.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei stressed that Iran is not buying time with the talks.
“We have entered the course of talks seriously and purposefully with the intention of reaching a fair agreement. We have proved our seriousness,” Baqaei was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.