Envoy says Trump ‘curious’ why Iran has not ‘capitulated’ under US pressure

South China Morning Post · Feb 22, 2026 · Collected from RSS

Full Article

US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not “capitulated” in the face of Washington’s military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal.The United States and Iran this week resumed Oman-mediated talks in Geneva aimed at averting the possibility of military action, after Washington sent two aircraft carriers, jets and weaponry to the region to back its warnings.In a Fox News interview with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, Witkoff said the president was “curious” about Iran’s position after he had warned them of severe consequences in the event they failed to strike a deal.“I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t … I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated’, but why they haven’t capitulated,” he said.“Why, under this pressure, with the amount of sea power and naval power over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do’? And yet it’s sort of hard to get them to that place.”The US envoy also confirmed in the interview that he had met Reza Pahlavi, who has not returned to Iran since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy.“I met him at the direction of the president,” he said, without providing further details.