President sees other states following UAE’s lead with Israel

FPI / August 23, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects Saudi Arabia will join the deal brokered by the Trump administration last week in which Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize diplomatic ties.

“I do,” Trump replied when asked at a White House news conference if he expected Saudi Arabia to join the deal. “Countries that you wouldn’t even believe want to come into that deal.”

On the questions of Iran-U.S. relations and Middle East peace, Trump said that “I see a lot of countries coming in fairly quickly. And when you have them all in, ultimately Iran will come in too. There’ll be peace in the Middle East. That’ll be nice. Iran will be very much neutralized. They never thought this could have happened. And with the horrendously stupid Iran deal signed by Obama, this could have never happened.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan ruled out the possibility until the Palestinian issue is resolved.

"Peace must be achieved with the Palestinians" on the basis of international agreements as a pre-condition for any normalization of relations, Prince Faisal told reporters during a visit to Berlin on Wednesday.

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said in a recent interview with Voice of America (VOA) that Trump, if re-elected in November, will attempt to restart Iran-U.S. negotiations over the latter's nuclear weapons program and activities aimed at destabilizing the Middle East.

“For President Rouhani, I would say it’s time for the region to move forward. Let’s stop being stuck in conflicts of the past. It’s time for people to get together and to make peace,” Kushner said.

Kushner also suggested that a new Iran-U.S. deal will help the struggling Iranaian economy.

“Peace is a noble thing. It’s a good thing and it’s a very important thing, if we want to have a world where everyone can have economic opportunity in order to live a better life than their parents,” he said.

“President Trump is willing to talk. He’s willing to meet,” Kushner told VOA, in reference to Iran’s Islamist rulers. “But ... he’s going to be tough."

Meanwhile, Trump said the UAE was interested in buying F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin.

“They have the money and they would like to order quite a few F-35s,” the president said.

Free Press International