Remarks by President Trump in Meeting (Excerpts)

September 13, 2019

Weapon Program: 

  • Nuclear

Oval Office

12:30 P.M. EDT

[...]

Q Mr. President, are you looking at arranging a meeting with Iranian President Rouhani at UNGA?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not looking at anything. Iran is a different country than it was two and a half years ago. Two and half years ago, they were given a lot of money by President Obama. Previous to that, $150 billion; $1.8 billion in cash -- in actual cash. It’s very impressive.

But they are a much different country right now than they were two and a half years ago when I came into office. And I do believe they’d like to make a deal. If they do, that’s great. And if they don’t, that’s great too. But they have tremendous financial difficulty, and the sanctions are getting tougher and tougher.

We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and they never will have a nuclear weapon. And if they’re thinking about enrichment, they can forget about it, because it’s going to be very -- it’s going to be very dangerous for them to enrich. Very, very dangerous, okay?

So you can -- you can --

Q So do you want to meet with him, or no?

THE PRESIDENT: -- you can spread the word to Iran.

Q Would you consider easing sanctions to let them -- to make a meeting happen?

THE PRESIDENT: We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens. I think Iran has potential, and I think North Korea. Those are two countries we’re dealing with right now at a very high level. And I think Iran has a tremendous, tremendous potential. They’re incredible people. They have -- we’re not looking for regime change. We hope that we can make a deal, and if we can’t make a deal, that’s fine too, okay? That’s fine too. But I think they have to make a deal. They’ve never been in this condition.

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