LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump says he was an hour away from making the decision to launch new strikes against Iran this week before calling them off.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, it was all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded. They're loaded to the brim. And we're all set to start.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Trump said Tuesday he's now giving Iran two or three days to reach a deal - maybe a week - extending the state of limbo that has defined the conflict for the last several weeks.
FADEL: NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez has been covering the various moves and he joins us now. Good morning, Franco.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: I feel like I'm having a little déjà vu here. I've heard Trump threaten to attack Iran during the ceasefire just to pull back from the threat in the midst of these negotiations. I mean, what happened this time? What are Trump and others in the administration saying?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. Trump was talking to reporters after giving them a tour of the construction site of his new ballroom, and that's why you could hear all the dinging and clanking in the clip. He said he delayed the strikes because of serious negotiations happening with Iran. Now, JD Vance, the vice president, later expanded on Trump's remarks, but he also gave a slightly different characterization of the prospects. But Vance did say there were two pathways for Iran - you know, continue to negotiate or restart the military campaign.
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JD VANCE: It takes two to tango. We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. So as the president just told me, we're locked and loaded. We don't want to go down that pathway, but the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.
ORDOÑEZ: And echoing Trump's comments from before, Vance also insisted that this was, quote, "not a forever war."
FADEL: OK. He says it's not a forever war, but it is an open-ended war. I mean, it's already gone on longer than the president said it would.
ORDOÑEZ: Right. And the idea that the U.S. could still strike this weekend, you know, kind of just speaks to that uncertainty that former officials I'm speaking with say could actually extend the conflict for months. Mona Yacoubian, a former State Department (ph) official and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns it's turning into a, quote, "frozen conflict" that can reignite at any time.
MONA YACOUBIAN: The bigger fear is also just that there is no resolution, or there's a resolution that leads to Iran's retaining de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz and Iran being able to continue to be disruptive.
ORDOÑEZ: And she called it kind of a half solution that, in essence, leads to a prolonged stalemate in which Trump's constant threats really impair any real movement toward economic repair or economic growth in the region.
FADEL: Now, you said earlier that Vance was characterizing the prospects of the negotiations differently. What did you mean?
ORDOÑEZ: Right. The president says there are serious negotiations happening with prospects of a deal, but Vance, meanwhile, says Iran's negotiating position is not clear. I mean, Vance says the country is fractured, the leadership is fractured, that the supreme leader has one view and other leaders have a different view on the direction they want to go in. And Vance did not say - or he said he did not know if the divisions were due to bad communication or bad faith, but he admits that it's making the process all the more difficult. And that's kind of a problem because it's hard to reach an agreement on something when you can't even agree on the issues that you're negotiating about.
FADEL: That's White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Thank you, Franco.
ORDOÑEZ: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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