WASHINGTON — President Trump told The Post on Friday that US warships are being reloaded with “the best ammunition” to resume strikes on Iran if peace talks in Pakistan fail.
Trump spoke shortly after Vice President JD Vance boarded Air Force Two en route to Islamabad, where he will be joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to negotiate a final peace after a two-week cease-fire was reached on Tuesday.
“We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon,” Trump said in a phone interview when asked if he thought the talks would be successful.
“We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made — even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” he said.
“But we’re loading up the ships. We’re loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
Iran is expected to be represented in the Pakistani capital by foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who insisted in pre-war talks that Iran had an inalienable right to enrich uranium, and the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
“You’re dealing against people that we don’t know whether or not they tell the truth,” Trump told The Post.
“To our face, they’re getting rid of all nuclear weapons, everything’s gone. And then they go out to the press and say, ‘No, we’d like to enrich.’ So we’ll find out.”
The talks are expected to focus on US demands that Iran hand over an estimated 1,000 pounds of deeply buried enriched uranium and continue the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. Trump has made clear that Iran reopening the Strait for free passage of ships is a critical component of any ceasefire deal, though few ships have passed through since the US stopped bombing Iran.
Other key points will be ending Iran’s support for regional proxies, the status of the country’s ballistic missile program and Tehran’s request for the lifting of US sanctions.
