President Donald Trump is willing to ease sanctions on Iran and release frozen funds for “concrete progress” on a nuclear deal, a US official told CNN on Monday, as mediators try to get both countries back to the negotiating table. The United States is having “positive and constructive discussions through mediators,” the official said, although he noted there will be no agreement unless nuclear issues are addressed. Trump on Saturday rejected Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, calling it “unacceptable.” On Sunday, Trump told Axios that he expects more talks with Iran to take place this week. The official said special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are leading the talks on the U.S. side. “They want to reach an agreement, but it is not the agreement I want to make,” the president said. “It’s what we might have agreed on a year ago. They went overboard.” According to the official, Iran has indicated it is flexible on nuclear issues, but the two sides have not reached an agreement on the timing of commitments. US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that Trump rejected the proposal because he did not believe Iran was negotiating in good faith, arguing it was unacceptable that Tehran was “asking for everything up front.” “The bottom line is that they were asking for everything from the beginning with the promise that they would talk later,” Waltz said on “State of the Union.” Waltz later said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “it’s kind of common sense” that Trump doesn’t have much confidence in the Iranian proposal. He dismissed Tehran’s latest offer as “a rather cynical attempt to put on the table something that they knew was unacceptable.” The White House official reiterated Waltz’s claim that the United States is skeptical of Iran’s promises, given that the country violated the US-Iran memorandum of understanding reached in July by firing on commercial ships.
