Trump Says Iran’s Top Leader Is Engaged in Peace Talks

President Donald Trump said that Iran’s top leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is involved in peace talks with the United States but that he suffered injuries during an airstrike earlier this year.

“He’s involved, absolutely. Yeah, I think they have a lot of respect for him,” Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” in an interview, referring to Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since he was named to the top Iranian leadership position after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in U.S.–Israeli airstrikes in February.

He added in the interview, which aired June 3, that “they say he’s giving approval because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time … his father and then him, I guess it’s a succession. But we seem to be getting along quite well.”

“I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him … if you believe the stories, he’s missing a lot of different parts,” the U.S. president also said in the interview.

Trump said the U.S. government had gone through two “sets” of Iranian negotiators who were now gone, as well as some of the third set of Iranian negotiators.

When he was asked about a possible meeting, Trump told the NY Post: “Yeah, I’d like to meet him. I’d love to meet everybody. I would like to meet him, and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.”

Trump has a history of meeting with adversarial leaders. Notably, Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his first term in office, in 2019, setting foot on North Korean territory. He also met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had previously been involved with an al-Qaeda affiliate, at the White House last year.

Separately, Trump told the NY Post that oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz could be blocked through the summer, as the extent of progress in peace talks with Iran remains unclear.

Since the start of the conflict, Iran has effectively shut down the strait, a crucial waterway that connects the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. The move has sent oil and gas prices surging worldwide.

An Iranian intelligence official warned on June 2 that Tehran may attempt to attack ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait near the Red Sea depending on how the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict progresses.

Trump said he thought it was “unlikely” that the strait would stay closed that long, but he acknowledged that a U.S. blockade stopping tankers with Iranian oil could go through the Labor Day holiday, on Sept. 7.

“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be [closed through Labor Day], but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” Trump said.

Continued shortages of oil and natural gas could keep global prices elevated and inflict levels of inflation on the United States and other countries that could hamper growth.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.