US President Donald Trump is attempting to build trust with Iran to avoid an armed conflict, Washington's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said in an interview released late on Friday.

On March 7, Trump said he had sent a letter to Iran's Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging a resumption of negotiations about the Iranian nuclear program.

“It roughly said: 'I'm a president of peace. That's what I want. There's no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk,'” Witkoff told right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, The National reported.

Ayatollah Khamenei, in a televised speech on Friday, said: “The Americans should know threats will get them nowhere when confronting Iran.”

Witkoff added the U.S. is continuing discussions with Iran through “back channels, through multiple countries and multiple conduits”.

Trump is “open to an opportunity to clean it all up with Iran, where they come back to the world and be a great nation once again … He wants to build trust with them,” he said.

In his first presidential term, Trump abandoned the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 though the agreement was endorsed by UN Security Council resolution 2231.

The nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was working effectively well. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, confirmed that Iran was fully loyal to the terms of the agreement.

Jake Sullivan, who served as national security advisor to President Joe Biden, said Trump quit the deal because it was signed by Barack Obama’s administration.

The deal signed between Iran, five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union, put the toughest inspections on Iran’s nuclear program.

Under the agreement, Iran agreed to put limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for termination of economic and financial sanctions. Even after Trump withdrew from the deal, Iran remained fully committed to the agreement for a full year. However, seeing no action by the European sides to compensate for the U.S. sanctions it started to gradually lift nuclear activities.