President Donald Trump is due to meet the Qatari prime minister at the White House on Monday, as he seeks to end the conflict with Iran.
Qatar has played a key role as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran. Trump is due to meet Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Qatar’s foreign minister, in a private meeting.
Al-Thani said both the United States and Iran were continuing to work toward an agreement.
“We cannot wait to reach a perfect agreement,” al-Thani said. “We hope to reach a good agreement.”
Trump said on Sunday that he was highly unlikely to order new attacks on Iran if talks on ending the conflict make progress.
“It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement,” Trump told CNN’s Jim Sciutto during a phone interview.
Iran Is ‘Failing Nation’: Trump
“The answer is highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary [to strike Iran],” Trump said.
“They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301 percent inflation. Highly unlikely it will be necessary. I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don’t know how hard I hit them.”
It’s unclear what Trump’s source was for the Iranian inflation figure.
The Central Bank of Iran’s most recent inflation figure suggested an official rate of 68.4 percent through Sept. 21, 2026.
Trump repeated the point to reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, as he prepared to board a plane back to Washington on Sunday night. He was convinced he was right to launch Operation Epic Fury, alongside Israel, against Iran on Feb. 28.
“They’re not going to have nuclear weapons,” Trump said, referring to Iran. “And we saved Israel and the Middle East. If they would have had it, there would be no Israel right now. There would be no Middle East.”
“And what are we going to do with one of the guys that was most responsible? They want to impeach him,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to the Democrats’ threat to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
“At some point they’re going to be reasonable,” Trump said, referring to Iran, before talking about a number of bridges and power plants that were potential targets.
“Now I could go in and blow them up right now. The problem with that is you’ll never be able to rebuild it. If I blow up the bridges and the power plants, the thing that takes is the hardest to rebuild are the big bridges.”
He said rebuilding these would put an “awfully big burden” on the people of Iran.
“I don’t like that,” Trump said.
“Task Force Iron Gate is in full force and effect in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon. “Coupled with history’s greatest Naval Blockade, very little gets into, or out of, Iran!”
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Adm. Brad Cooper created Task Force Iron Gate on Saturday to “support ongoing U.S. government efforts to prevent Iran from using ground routes to transport advanced weapons and other materials,” according to a Nov. 7 CENTCOM statement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that there was no sign of an imminent breakthrough in the negotiations with Iran.
Speaking before departing Florida for a G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris, Rubio said the Iranian demands were “unacceptable.”
“You have a number of countries that continue to engage them with different ideas, but I wouldn’t say we’re in the verge of a breakthrough,” Rubio said.
“The president would always prefer to solve this and every problem diplomatically. Sometimes that’s not possible, unfortunately.
“But if there’s a chance to do it, we’ll explore it.
“Right now, it hasn’t been very productive because the Iranian demands are simply not just unacceptable, but in some cases outrageous and ridiculous and really not realistic.”
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei responded to Rubio’s remarks on Monday.
“Is it unreasonable that Iran demands that U.S. illegal sanctions and its naval blockade must be lifted before negotiations start and that the war should end on all fronts?” Baghaei said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
