Trump Offers Iran Olive Branch Days After Threatening Tweet

The president said Monday he's open to meeting President Hassan Rouhani
By Josh Gardner,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 30, 2018 4:30 PM CDT
Trump Says He'll Meet With Iran 'Whenever They Want'
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Trump has extended an olive branch to Iran's leaders just days after a tweet he wrote appeared to say he was ready to use military force should they "ever threaten the United States." Per CNN, the president was at a news conference at the White House with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte when he told reporters he "would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet." The president said he believes Iranian leadership will eventually want to meet with him and added that he would set "no preconditions" for such a meeting. “Speaking to other people, especially when you are talking about potentials of war and death, and famine and lots of other things, you meet. There is nothing wrong with meeting," the president said.

As the AP notes, Trump struck a decidedly different tone on Twitter when he issued an all caps threat to Iran a week earlier. "YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE," the president wrote in an apparent response to a recent warning from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that a war with the country would be the "mother of all wars." Rhetoric out of Iran has ratcheted up since Trump's decision in May to withdraw the US from the nuclear accord and reinstate sanctions. (More Iran stories.)

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