The condition in the Gulf may appear messy, but events are dragging the World towards possible peace.
On Friday, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said it seems like Iran is inching towards a place where talks could be held, days after US President Donald Trump left the door open to a possible meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York.
“It seems in some ways that Iran is inching toward that place where we could have talks and hopefully it’ll play out that way,” Esper said at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.
Trump on Wednesday hinted the possibility of a convention with Rouhani at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York.
Asked about the possibility of such a meeting, Trump told White House reporters anything was possible. “Sure, anything’s possible. They would like to be able to solve their problem,” he said, referring to inflation in Iran. “We could solve it in 24 hours.”
The tensions between Iran and the US are escalating amid threats and warnings from Iran since Trump last year unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 international nuclear treaty under which Iran had agreed to rein in its atomic program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Iran is threatening to withdraw from the nuclear deal causing panic and rage in Europe. Indeed, European powers are obsessed with salvaging the deal and do not want Iran to continue its uranium enrichment program and other activities that could sustain Tehran’s status to develop nuclear weapons. It is also a boundary line for US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to take necessary steps If Iran has to resume its uranium enrichment, which could include airstrikes on Iranian nuclear reactors sites.
Relevant: Violating 2015’s Nuclear Treaty: Iran to begin uranium enrichment beyond the limit
Washington has since renewed and intensified its sanctions, slashing Iran’s crude oil sales by more than 80 percent.
Rouhani on Wednesday announced Iran would take another step away from the 2015 deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment, but he also gave European powers two more months to try to save the multilateral pact.
On the other hands, the United States refused to ease its economic sanctions on Iran, imposed new ones in order to choke off the smuggling of Iranian oil, but did not abolish, a French plan to give Iran a $15 billion credit line
The battle between the Trump administration and the IRGC-led administration in Tehran is escalated in the recent past. The recent moves suggested Iran, the United States, and the major US European allies may be opening a new way for diplomacy to try to resolve a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
