President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he hopes Israel and Iran can broker a deal but said sometimes countries have to fight it out first.
Talking to reporters as he left for the G7 summit in Canada, Trump said the U.S. will continue to support the defense of Israel but declined to say if he asked the U.S. ally to pause strikes on Iran.
"I hope there’s going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal and we’ll see what happens. Sometimes they have to fight it out, but we’re gonna see what happens," Trump said.
Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on Sunday, killing and wounding civilians and raising concerns of a broader regional conflict, with both militaries urging civilians on the opposing side to take precautions against further strikes.
Urgent calls to deescalate
World leaders made urgent calls to deescalate. The attack on nuclear sites set a “dangerous precedent,” China's foreign minister said Saturday. The region is already on edge as Israel seeks to annihilate Hamas, an Iranian ally, in the Gaza Strip, where war still rages after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off such calls, saying Israel's strikes so far are “nothing compared to what they will feel under the sway of our forces in the coming days.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar told CNN that the goal “is not a regime change,” adding that “this is for the Iranian people to decide.”
Iran has always said its nuclear program was peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that it has not pursued a weapon since 2003. But Iran has enriched ever larger stockpiles of uranium to near weapons-grade levels in recent years and was believed to have the capacity to develop multiple weapons within months if it chose to do so.