Countries urged delay of planned ‘very major attack’ as Iran, Trump says
US President Donald Trump said on Monday several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, urged him to delay what he described as a planned “very major attack,” saying they believed a nuclear-related deal with Iran was close.
“Well, other countries have come to me, and they’ve said we were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow. I put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran, and we’ll see what they amount to.
I was asked by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and some others if we could put it off for two or three days, a short period of time, because they think that they are getting very close to making a deal, and if we can do that, where there’s no nuclear weapon going into the hands of Iran, I think, and if they’re satisfied, we will be probably satisfied also.
We’ve informed Israel, we’ve informed other people in the Middle East that have been involved with us, and it’s a very positive development, but we’ll see whether or not it amounts to anything. We’ve had periods of time where we had, we thought, pretty much getting close to making a deal, and didn’t work out, but this is a little bit different. Now we’re already going tomorrow, very big, and not something I wanted to do, but we have no choice, because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.