Iran suggests it is open to talks and Trump ‘eventually’ willing – White House
The senior official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders were or how they had made their alleged willingness to talk known.
A senior White House official has said Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the US after American and Israeli forces launched a major attack against Tehran, killing the country’s supreme leader and other high-ranking officials.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said US President Donald Trump said he was “eventually” willing to talk, but that for now the military operation “continues unabated”.
The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders were or how they had made their alleged willingness to talk known.
Mr Trump told The Atlantic, in an interview on Sunday, that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining to comment on the timing.
The potential future diplomatic opening comes as new details are emerging about the detailed planning that went into the US-Israeli strikes and some of the targets that were hit in Iran.
US central command said that B-2 stealth bombers struck Iran’s ballistic missile facilities with 2,000-pound bombs. This mirrors the approach that the military took in June, when Mr Trump agreed to deploy B-2 bombers to attack three key Iranian nuclear sites.
Mr Trump claimed in his State Of The Union speech last week that Iran had been building ballistic missiles that could reach the US homeland — a justification he repeated again on Saturday as he announced that the bombardment of Iran was under way.
Iran has not acknowledged that it is building or seeking to build intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But the US defence intelligence agency said in an unclassified report last year that Iran could develop a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability”.
Before the attacks, the CIA had for months tracked the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a person familiar with the operation.
The intelligence was shared with Israeli officials, and the timing of the strikes was adjusted in part because of that information about the Iranian leaders’ location, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The intelligence sharing between the US and Israel reflects the preparation that went into the strikes, which continued for a second day on Sunday after Mr Khamenei’s killing threw the future of the Islamic Republic into uncertainty and raised the risk of escalating regional conflict.
Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to discuss details on Sunday when asked on CBS’ Face The Nation programme about intelligence sharing with Israel.
But he said tracking the movements of the supreme leader and the heads of other adversarial nations “is obviously one of the highest priorities of our intelligence community”.
“Clearly, this operation is driven by intelligence collected by Israel and the United States that has once again proven that our nations have capabilities that no other nation on Earth has,” Mr Cotton said.
The US regularly shares intelligence with allies including Israel.
These partnerships, and the accuracy of the intelligence they yield, is often critical not only to the success of a military operation but also to the public’s support for it.
Virginia senator Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the committee, told The Associated Press that historically, “our working relationship with the Mossad and Israel is really strong”.
Mossad is the Israeli spy agency.
Mr Warner said he had serious concerns about the justification for the strikes, Mr Trump’s long-term plans for the conflict and the risks that US service members would face.
The military announced on Sunday that three American troops had been killed and five were seriously wounded in the Iran operation.
“No tears will be shed over their leadership being eliminated but always the question is: OK, what next?” Mr Warner said.
