Trump Says He’d Be Willing to Meet With Iran’s Khamenei If Deal Is Made

U.S. President Donald Trump said that he would be willing to meet with top Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei if a deal is made between the two countries to end hostilities.

Also in the Oval Office press event, Trump was asked about the prospect of meeting with Khamenei, who was named as Iran’s highest-level official in March after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in U.S.–Israeli airstrikes in late February.

“If we make a deal, it’s possible that I would meet,” he said. “I’d be okay with that.”

Trump also suggested that he did not “want to meet” with Khamenei right now, “but if I did meet, I’d be honored to meet him.”

Despite U.S. airstrikes killing Khamenei’s father, Trump said that he believes the younger Khamenei would be “professional” in his dealings with the United States.

“In some circles, he has a very good reputation, actually,” Trump added.

Iran’s new leader has not been seen in public since he was named to the position. Iranian state-run media has issued statements attributed to him throughout the conflict, and an X account attributed to him released multiple statements on Thursday.

Earlier in the week, Trump said in an interview with The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” that Khamenei has been involved with U.S.–Iran talks and suggested that he was injured in U.S. airstrikes.

Also, on Thursday, the president said that he had considered the possibility of launching a special operations mission to seize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile but ultimately did not go ahead with it.

“There was a time at the very beginning when we thought about doing that, because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out,” he said, adding that it would take weeks.

As he was speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump made reference to former President Jimmy Carter’s failed mission in Iran in 1980, coming in the aftermath of the revolution that installed the current regime and amid a protracted hostage situation at the U.S. Embassy building in Tehran that lasted for more than a year.

“I didn’t want to be Jimmy Carter. I didn’t feel like being Jimmy Carter,” Trump told reporters, answering a question from a reporter about sending in U.S. special forces to obtain the uranium.

“It’s not like Venezuela, like you go in, you’re there for a matter of minutes and you’re out, and everybody’s waving goodbye,” Trump said, referring to the January military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. “You need massive equipment to airlift the equipment, and you’re in a war zone.”

Iran has largely blocked commercial shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean, keeping gas and oil prices elevated when compared with the period before the war. As of Friday, the price for a gallon of regular gasoline averaged $4.22 in the United States, according to data provided by the American Automobile Association.

Among other demands, the Trump administration has said that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and must open the Strait. Tehran has demanded that hostilities be ended on multiple fronts, including between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.