President Trump said in an interview Friday he’s looking to broker a nuclear deal with Iran, sending a letter directly to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader. 

“I said I hope you’re going to negotiate because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran,” Mr. Trump said he wrote in the message during an interview on Fox Business Network. “I think they want to get that letter. The other alternative is we have to do something because you can’t let them have another nuclear weapon.”

“If Iran doesn’t negotiate, it will be very ugly for them. Iran can’t have nukes. Other options are available.”

Mr. Trump spoke about Iran during a press conference in the Oval Office later Friday.

“They’ll be some interesting days ahead,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s all I can tell you. We’re down to final strokes with Iran…down to the final moments. Can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

He added, “We have a situation with Iran that something is going to happen very, very soon. Hopefully, we can have a peace deal. I’d rather see a peace deal than the other. But the other will solve the problem.”

Iran has not yet received the letter, Iran’s mission to the United Nations at New York said on Friday, according to Reuters. Iran’s Nour News, affiliated with the country’s top security body, dismissed Mr. Trump’s letter as a “repetitive show” by Washington, the news service reported.

Mr. Trump’s comments come after Treasury Secretary Bessent signaled a shift in Iran policy during a fireside chat with Fox Business host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

“If I were an Iranian, I would get all my money out of the rial now,” he said during the Q&A portion with attendees, referring to Iran’s currency. “Making Iran broke again will mark the beginning of our updated sanctions policy.”

“If economic security is national security, the regime in Tehran will have neither.”

During his first term in the White House, Mr. Trump took a hardline approach against Iran. In 2018, he withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with Iran made by the Obama Administration. He said the agreement was “defective to its core” because it only limited Iran’s nuclear activities for a fixed amount of time and had done nothing to stop the country’s development of ballistic missiles.

“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of this deal,” Mr. Trump said at the time.