US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that talks with Iran could yield results over the coming weekend and are going “very well,” despite denials from Tehran that there has been progress toward an agreement.

“I hear the negotiation itself is going very well actually,” Trump told reporters, adding of a potential deal: “It might not happen… It could happen over the weekend.”

Trump said that under a deal being discussed with Iran, “we will get” Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — which has been a major sticking point in negotiations — repeating his insistence the material would be removed from within the Islamic Republic’s borders.

Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. While Iran, whose leaders are sworn to Israel’s destruction, denies seeking nuclear arms, it has amassed uranium enriched to levels with no civilian application.

Tehran has insisted throughout negotiations on its right to retain its right to enrich uranium.

Additionally, Trump said on Wednesday he wants to separate talks on the conflict in Lebanon and those on the war between the US and Iran, although Tehran insists the conflicts are linked.

“I’d like to separate it, I’d like to have a separate thing because it is, it is separate,” Trump told reporters, hours before Washington announced Israel and Lebanon agreed to a renewed ceasefire, which aims to establish “pilot” security zones the Lebanese army would control, and from which Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists would........

© The Times of Israel