The United States and Iran are not currently in talks to end the war as Washington focuses on pressuring Tehran economically, but all options remain “on the table,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. “What President Trump’s number one goal has been and will always be is to ensure that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Period. And so we’ve had Operation Epic Fury to destroy their military. Now we have Operation Economic Outcast to destroy their economy,” Leavitt told the “Fox & Friends” program. “No negotiations are happening right now, and this will continue until the president feels that maybe they come to the table in a meaningful way. We have not seen that yet,” she said. “He of course continues to retain all options on the table, and the naval blockade continues to be in effect as well.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had warned countries on Monday to cut their financial ties with Iran or face secondary sanctions as part of what had been billed as “economic D-Day,” but the Treasury Department stopped short of actually imposing penalties. Qatar’s prime minister visited Tehran on Thursday in a bid to relaunch diplomacy after the U.S. and Iran traded recriminations over Washington’s promise to increase economic pressure, a move one Iranian official described as “all-out economic war.”
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Ryan Patrick Jones; editing by Michelle Nichols)