By Bo Erickson and Jasper Ward
New Brunswick, New Jersey, June 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News’ "Meet the Press" that he would not unfreeze Iranian assets or lift any sanctions before a peace deal is reached.
Trump said he would consider those steps after an agreement is done. "Comes after," he said. "Yeah. If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking. Yeah."
Trump also said that he was not demanding that Lebanon be a part of a short-term deal
with Tehran.
"I think they'd like to see it, but I'm not demanding," Trump said in the interview recorded on Friday.
U.S. and Israeli forces began strikes on Iran on February 28. The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate a potential peace deal for weeks. "We're very close to a deal, or I'm going to blow the hell out of them," Trump told NBC News.
The president also said he would be willing to speak with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since being wounded in U.S. strikes at the beginning of the conflict.
"I don't want to say whether or not I know where he is, but there's a good probability that I do," Trump said.
Top Trump administration officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio insist a temporary ceasefire agreement has been holding up despite recent U.S. strikes on Iran, telling lawmakers last week those are defensive actions.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Bo Erickson in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non, Tomasz Janowski and Nick Zieminski)
