MS NOW’s Jackie Alemany reportedly spoke by phone with President Donald Trump during a commercial break on Sunday morning about his just-announced second round of peace talks with Iran. Over the phone, he told Alemany that the American negotiators will be U.S. Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Vice President JD Vance will not be traveling to participate in talks because the Secret Service could not guarantee security on such short notice.

JACKIE ALEMANY, MS NOW REPORTER: Yeah, the president said that Secret Service essentially-I feel like the takeaway was they don’t have enough time to set up because of the speed for the vice president to go and leave those negotiations again like he did last week. We asked him about the major sticking points here, and he claims-and he has been claiming this for the last few days now-that Iran has agreed to never have a nuclear weapon. He said forever. The time limit would be forever. We asked him about that period of time because the U.S., during negotiations, had initially said that they made a 20-year offer. Iran countered with a three-year offer, according to our reporting. That got some blowback from hardliners in the U.S. who say not even 20 years is sufficient. They want an indefinite suspension. The president now saying that that is what Iran is promising, but when we followed up for some of the specifics about the concessions that the U.S. is making in return, he said he wasn’t going to negotiate with us. MS NOW HOST: You also asked about China, the fact that China is playing a part in this. What did he say? JACKIE ALEMANY: The China issue has been something that I’ve really been interested in because as we were going through it last weekend, the one national security advisor that was also on the list, in addition to Andy Baker, was a China specialist, Southeast Asia specialist. This week, that was something the president talked about extensively during his interview with Maria Bartiromo, where he said that he had sent President Xi a letter asking him to stop supplying Iran with weapons. There were reports-although MSNBC did not verify those-that China has been replenishing Iran’s military capabilities, and that has potentially allowed them to be able to stay in this fight longer than anybody anticipated. It was also reported that China was one of the players that actually kind of nudged Iran to get to the table. They get a third of their crude oil from the region through the Strait of Hormuz, so they have a vested interest in this. And he said that China is behaving very well.

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