WASHINGTON — President Trump vowed Friday that there would be no peace until Iran’s “unconditional surrender” — as an administration insider revealed to The Post that Tehran is attempting to establish back-channel talks in a sign the regime is feeling the pain.
“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” the president declared on Truth Social.
“After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before,” he wrote.
“IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).’”
Tehran, meanwhile, has made “multiple reach outs” to the administration since the US-Israeli military campaign started on Saturday, an administration official told The Post.
The overtures signaled to US officials that Iran wants to start talking again after blustering through pre-war negotiations.
The contact isn’t well-known even within the administration and substantive negotiations have not occurred — as Trump demands the right to pick Iran’s next leader.
It’s unknown which Iranian officials made contact or what the response was.
Trump said Thursday that Iran was pleading for peace.
“They’re calling, they’re saying, ‘How do we make a deal?’ I said, ‘You’re being a little bit late’ and we want to fight now more than they do,” Trump said.
The president met on Friday afternoon with major arms manufacturers including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — leaving with their commitment to “quadruple” production to boost the war effort, he said.
Trump rated progress in the war as a “12” to “15” out of 10 during an unrelated Friday afternoon event.
“Their army is gone,” he said. “Their Navy is gone. Their communications are gone. Their leaders are gone. Two sets of their leaders are gone. They’re down to their third set. Their Air Force is wiped out entirely. Think of it, they have 32 ships. All 32 are at the bottom of the ocean. Other than that, they’re doing very well.”
Follow live updates on the US and Israel’s war with Iran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Arab leaders on Thursday that there currently isn’t any US dialogue with Iran and that talks now could undermine the military mission, Axios reported.
Iranian officials rebuffed US offers last Thursday to facilitate civilian nuclear energy and lift crippling sanctions — prompting Trump to authorize the largest American military operation in a generation to cripple the country’s military and take out its leadership.
In the final round of talks, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner that his country had an “inalienable right” to enrich its own uranium, setting the war in motion.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday defined unconditional surrender as the accomplishment of Trump’s four core war aims.
“What President Trump means when he says unconditional surrender is when he, as commander in chief of the United States military and the leader of the free world, determines that Iran can no longer pose a threat to the United States of America and to our troops and our personnel in the Middle East,” she said.
Trump has identified his goals as destroying Iran’s nuclear program, navy and ballistic missile production and ending its support for proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen.
The president has said the mission could take four weeks.
‘I don’t mind religious leaders’
Trump demanded Tehran’s capitulation after insisting on a direct role in picking the successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial wave of US-Israeli attacks on Saturday.
Trump told CNN in an interview on Friday that he was open to another cleric replacing the late ayatollah.
“I may be, yeah, I mean, it depends on who the person is,” he told anchor Dana Bash on the phone. “I don’t mind religious leaders. I deal with a lot of religious leaders and they are fantastic.”
The president went on to say that he would not insist on Iran becoming a democracy, telling Bash: “There has to be a leader that’s going be fair and just. Do a great job. Treat the United States and Israel well, and treat the other countries in the Middle East — they’re all our partners.”
The former host of “The Apprentice,” however, has brushed off reports that Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba could take over, calling him a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” option.
Trump hasn’t identified toppling the Islamic Republic as a war aim, but has urged Iranians to take advantage of the opportunity. He said this week that he would be comfortable with “somebody from within” replacing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who died Saturday in the initial wave of attacks.
He has repeatedly noted as a favorable scenario the succession in Venezuela following his Jan. 3 raid to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro, who was replaced with his more amenable vice president Delcy Rodriguez.
Rodriguez has agreed to Trump’s demands to free political prisoners and work with US oil companies.
The Iranian government currently is led by a three-man council, including two regime hardliners — Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei — and President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in 2024 as a relative reformer.
The president has acknowledged that the Venezuela scenario is more difficult to execute in Iran because more than four dozen top officials have been killed so far in the war.
Trump also appears to be keeping his options open and on Thursday endorsed reported plans by Iranian Kurds to invade from Iraq in hopes of inspiring a popular uprising.
“I think it’s wonderful that they would want to do that,” the president told Reuters. “I’d be all for it.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the United States’ airstrikes on Iran:
In other developments:
– Crude oil rose above $90/barrel for the first time in more than two years, hitting $92.89. But the White House said it is confident prices will come back down quickly.
– Israel launched a “broad-scale wave of strikes” on Tehran on the seventh day of the war, while Iran continued missile and drone attacks on Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
– The Iranian drone aircraft carrier (IRIS Shahid Bagheri) was engulfed in flames following a US airstrike.
–The White House released a wild video montage pairing Iran strikes with Hollywood blockbusters, captioned: “Justice the American way.”
