President Donald Trump has said the United States could stop attacking Iran within two to three weeks and that a deal is not necessary to end a war that has disrupted energy supplies and shaken the global economy.His comments came as Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that no negotiations are going on with Washington despite direct and indirect exchanges of messages, nearly five weeks after the US and Israel began attacking Iran.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listTrump, who previously claimed that Iran was engaged in negotiations and “begging” for a deal, appeared to change his tune on Tuesday on the alleged diplomatic drive.“Iran doesn’t have to make a deal, no,” he said when asked by reporters at the White House if successful diplomacy was a prerequisite for the US to wind down the conflict. He said the US would be “leaving very soon … maybe two weeks, maybe three.”“When we feel that they are, for a long period of time, put into the Stone Ages and they won’t be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we’ll leave,” he said.Iran has always maintained that its nuclear activities are peaceful and that it has never sought to produce a nuclear weapon.Trita Parsi, a foreign policy expert on Iran at the Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s statements should be treated with caution. He noted that it would not be “as easy for Trump to just walk out” of a conflict that has spread across the region and killed thousands of people – mostly in Iran and Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in conjunction with a …
