Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should be “very worried” as Washington expands its military presence in the region, President Donald Trump warned in an interview on Wednesday.
"I would say he should be very worried, yeah, he should be," Trump told the U.S. broadcaster NBC News.
"As you know, they are negotiating with us."
The comments come as Trump has ordered an ongoing mass military buildup in the region as he seeks to pressure Iran to meet him at the negotiating table.
Asked about Iranian protesters, the U.S. president said: "We've had their back."
"That country is a mess right now because of us. We went in, we wiped out their nuclear. Peace in the Middle East. If I didn't take out their nuclear, think of it. If we didn't take out that nuclear, we wouldn't have peace in the Middle East, because the Arab countries could have never done that. They were very, very afraid of Iran," he added.
Trump was referring to strikes he ordered on Iran's nuclear facilities in June.
News website Axios earlier Wednesday reported that the U.S. told Iran that it will not agree to Tehran's demands to change the location and format of talks planned for Friday.
"We told them it is this or nothing, and they said, 'Ok, then nothing'," the website quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying.
The report came after Iranian media said the indirect talks between Iran and the U.S. are set to take place on Friday in Oman's capital Muscat, with discussions expected to focus on Tehran's nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions.
Istanbul, Türkiye, has been the planned site of the nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran.
Per Axios, the official said that if the Iranians are willing to go back to the original format, the U.S. is ready to meet this week or next week.
"We want to reach a real deal quickly or people will look at other options," the senior official said.
Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the venue for talks with Iran is "still being worked through," and that discussions must address Tehran's ballistic missiles, nuclear program, regional "sponsorship of terrorist organizations," and the treatment of its people.
"We thought we had an established forum that had been agreed to in Türkiye," he said. "It was put together by a number of partners who wanted to attend and be a part of it. I saw conflicting reports yesterday from the Iranian side saying that they had not agreed to that, so that's still being worked through."
Oman has previously served as a mediator in indirect contacts between the two sides.
In recent days, several countries have stepped in and offered to mediate between Tehran and Washington to ease tensions, with Türkiye playing a particularly active role.
The U.S. and its ally Israel accuse Iran of seeking to produce nuclear weapons, while Tehran says its nuclear program is designed for peaceful purposes, including electricity generation.
