Press TV - President Donald Trump says there has been no US outreach towards Iran over negotiations between the two sides, only weeks after he said he was ready to sit down with Iranian authorities.

Last month, Trump offered to hold negotiations with senior Iranian officials �any time they want to.�

�It�s good for the country, good for them, good for us and good for the world. No preconditions. If they want to meet, I�ll meet,� Trump said at the time.

In response, senior Iranian authorities collectively rejected that offer, which was made shortly after Washington unilaterally scrapped a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and reinstated its sanctions against the country.

Iranian officials said Tehran would not negotiate under pressure and threat.

Besides withdrawing from the deal, Washington had also threatened the Islamic Republic with the �strongest sanctions in history� as well as military action.

After receiving Iran's negative response, Trump now says that Washington has not reached out to Tehran to discuss talks, showing little interest in such negotiations.
�If they want to meet that�s fine, and if they don�t want to meet, I couldn�t care less,� he told Reuters in an interview Monday.
Tensions with Turkey

Elsewhere in his interview, Trump said he would not back down in a standoff with Turkey over a detained US pastor.
�I think it�s very sad what Turkey is doing,� he said. �I think they�re making a terrible mistake. There will be no concessions.�
He said he had thought Ankara would release pastor Andrew Brunson after the US helped persuade Israel to free a detained Turkish citizen.

Brunson, 50, was indicted by a Turkish court on charges of having links with the Kurdish militants and the movement of the US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of having masterminded an abortive coup in 2016.

Brunson, who has already spent nearly two years behind bars in Turkey, will face up to 35 years in jail if convicted.

His imprisonment and subsequent house arrest have caused one of the deepest rows between Turkey and the US.

The initially political dispute later turned economic as Washington threatened �large sanctions� on Turkey and ordered a sharp rise in US tariffs on imports from Turkey, prompting its NATO ally to take a series of counter-measures.

The tensions pushed Turkey�s lira currency into freefall against the dollar, but Ankara has said that it will manage to emerge from the economic crisis with the help of its partners, who have also been hit by American bans.

Trump also brushed aside concerns that the dispute between the two allies could cause serious economic damage in Europe and emerging market economies.

�I�m not concerned at all. I�m not concerned. This is the proper thing to do,� he said.