"What I'd like to see with Iran - I'd like Iran to call me," says Trump

John Kerry should be charged under Logan Act for contacts with Iranians

The US President, Donald Trump has urged Iran's leadership to sit down and talk with him about giving up Tehran's nuclear program and said he could not rule out a military confrontation given the heightened tensions between the two countries.
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Trump declined to say what prompted him to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group to the region over what was described as unspecified threats.

"We have information that you don't want to know about," said Trump. "They were very threatening and we have to have great security for this country and many other places."

Trump was asked whether there was a risk of confrontation with the American military presence in the area.

"I guess you could say that always, right? I don't want to say no, but hopefully that won't happen. We have one of the most powerful ships in the world that is loaded up and we don't want to do anything," he said on Thursday.

Trump has expressed a willingness to meet Iranian leaders in the past to no avail and renewed that appeal in talking to reporters.

"What they should be doing is calling me up, sitting down. We can make a deal, a fair deal, we just don't want them to have nuclear weapons - not too much to ask. And we would help put them back to great shape."

He added: "They should call. If they do, we're open to talk to them."

"What I'd like to see with Iran - I'd like Iran to call me," Trump said, speaking at the White House. "Financially, they have great potential."

He also accused former US secretary of state John Kerry of instructing Iran not to call him and said that violated US law and Kerry should be prosecuted for it.

The former Secretary of State should be charged under the Logan Act, an 18th century law, for his conversations with Iranians, blaming him for messing up his communication with Tehran.

Trump apparently blamed Kerry for the administration’s lack of communication with Iran, and suggested the former diplomat be prosecuted for his own contacts with the Islamic Republic.

As a private citizen, Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif last year to discuss outstanding issues related to the 2015 nuclear pact which both helped to negotiate. The meeting outraged President Trump.

“The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal,” the president tweeted. “He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”

Passed in 1799 under the John Adams administration, the Logan Act criminalizes unauthorized negotiations with foreign powers with which the United States has a dispute. In only two cases has anyone ever been charged under the Act, the last time in 1853, and neither resulted in a conviction.

During the special counsel probe into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow, investigators threatened Trump campaign staffers George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn with violations of the Logan Act for their interactions with foreigners, but neither were ever charged under the law. 

RT