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Kushner Makes Peace Overture to Iran as Trump Seeks Negotiations if
Re-elected

Michael Lipin

   WASHINGTON - Jared Kushner, the senior adviser to President Donald
   Trump, is calling on Iran to make peace with Washington as Trump
   predicts there will be a quick return to U.S.-Iran negotiations if he
   is re-elected in November.

   In a Tuesday interview for VOA program Plugged In with Greta Van
   Susteren, Kushner appealed to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to
   engage with Washington.

   "For President Rouhani, I would say it's time for the region to move
   forward. Let's stop being stuck in conflicts of the past. It's time for
   people to get together and to make peace," he said.

   Decades-long U.S.-Iran tensions have intensified since Trump took
   office in 2017. The U.S. has toughened unilateral sanctions on Tehran
   since 2018 in an effort to stop Iranian activities deemed
   destabilizing. It has used military action in some cases, most notably
   killing top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a January
   airstrike on Baghdad.

   'Maximum pressure'

   Trump has said a key goal of his "maximum pressure" campaign is to
   persuade Iran to end its perceived malign behaviors by negotiating a
   broad, new bilateral agreement. Such a deal would replace the 2015
   multilateral deal in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities
   in return for sanctions relief from the U.S. and other world powers.
   Trump withdrew from that deal in 2018, criticizing it as not tough
   enough on Tehran, whom the West long has accused of seeking to build
   nuclear weapons. Iran has said its nuclear activities are peaceful.

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