US President Donald Trump warned Iran Sunday against killing protesters who have risen up over the regime’s downing of a civilian airliner as his defense secretary left the door open to talks with Tehran without preconditions.
Trump’s salvo came as Iran’s Islamic regime faced a challenge from angry street protests, having come to the brink of war with the US after a series of tit-for-tat confrontations.
“To the leaders of Iran – DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS,” Trump tweeted, warning that the world and “more importantly, the USA is watching.”
In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” just before the tweet, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Trump was still willing to hold talks with Iran’s leaders.
National Security Adviser suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran “choked off”, will force them to negotiate. Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and “don’t kill your protesters.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2020
“We’re willing to sit down and discuss without precondition a new way forward, a series of steps by which Iran becomes a more normal country,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”.
And if something happened to the protesters? Esper replied: “The president has drawn no preconditions other than to say we’re willing to meet with the Iranian government.”
Long-standing US-Iran tensions have soared since January 3 when missiles fired from a US drone killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, near Baghdad’s airport.
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