(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he hasn’t made a final decision about what comes next in his pressure campaign on Iran but he made clear he was “not happy” with the current negotiations over his demand that Tehran end its nuclear program.

Trump spoke as left the White House for a trip to Texas amid the massive U.S. military buildup he’s ordered in the region.

“I’m not happy with the fact that they’re not willing to give us what we have to have,” Trump said. “So, I’m not thrilled with that. We’ll see what happens with talking later. We’ll — we’ll have some additional talks today. But no, I’m not happy with the way they’re going.”

“Well, we haven’t made a final decision,” he added. “They cannot have nuclear weapons, and we’re not thrilled with the way they’re negotiating. So, we’ll see how it all works.”

Asked if there’s a risk that U.S. strikes could lead to prolonged conflict in the Middle East, Trump said “there’s always a risk. You know, when there’s war, there’s a risk in anything both good and bad.”

Trump, who has yet to explain why he might soon order a strike on Iran and what his overall objective is, also spoke of regime change in Tehran, but only in vague terms.

Asked if his team had told him U.S. strikes now will lead to regime change right away, Trump said no.

“No, nobody’s told me that. You don’t know. I mean, nobody knows. There might be and there might not be,” he said.

Trump repeated that he preferred diplomacy over military action.

“We have the greatest military anywhere in the world. There’s nothing close. I’d love not to use it, but sometimes you have to,” he said.

His remarks came after it was announced earlier Friday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would travel to Israel on Monday and Tuesday, with rising tensions with Iran said to be high on his agenda.

That trip announcement came just hours after the U.S. embassy in Israel ordered the departure of nonessential employees and family members.

Meanwhile, in an interview aboard Air Force Two on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance told The Washington Post that there was “no chance” of a drawn-out war in Iran as a result of potential strikes that are being weighed by the White House.

“The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen,” Vance told the Post.

Vance’s comments come as the U.S. and Iran held indirect talks on Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland, which concluded without a resolution so far.

Vance added that while he doesn’t know what President Donald Trump will do in Iran, he described the range of options as strikes that would “ensure Iran isn’t going to get a nuclear weapon” or actions that could lead to a diplomatic solution.

The vice president told the Post that he remained a “skeptic of foreign military interventions” and said he believed the president was as well. He added that “we all prefer the diplomatic option,” while conceding, “but it really depends on what the Iranians do and what they say.”

Vance dismissed questions from the Post about his past criticisms of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and if he could have foreseen being part of an administration now flirting with the prospect of regime change.

“Well, I mean, look. Life has all kinds of crazy twists and turns,” Vance said. “But I think Donald Trump is an ‘America First’ president, and he pursues policies that work for the American people.”

“I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid overlearning the lessons of the past. Just because one president screwed up a military conflict doesn’t mean we can never engage in military conflict again. We’ve got to be careful about it, but I think the president is being careful,” he said.

Vance’s comments came ahead of his meeting with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi and other U.S. officials Friday in Washington to discuss Iran, a source familiar with the meeting confirmed to ABC News.

The scheduled meeting follows Thursday’s gathering in Geneva between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, with Al Busaidi for indirect talks between Iran and the United States.

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(WASHINGTON) — As the first primaries in the 2026 midterm elections kick off on Tuesday, Democrats once again are dealing with divides in their party, including over generational change and immigration enforcement, in contests where progressives are taking on incumbents.

One of these faceoffs is set for Tuesday in North Carolina. Nida Allam, 32, vice chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, is mounting a primary challenge from the left to Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee, 69. Allam previously lost to Foushee in the 2022 primary in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District.

“We have an opportunity to push and champion not just Trump and the right-wing administration, but also our own party; that this seat could be the most powerful tool for progressives and Democrats in the South, but it’s only as powerful as the person sitting in that seat,” Allam told ABC News in an interview.

Allam has the support of progressive stalwart independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who campaigned for her in mid-February and told supporters at a rally, “At a moment when the oligarchs are tightening their grip on our society, we need leaders like Nida, leaders who answer to working families and not the billionaire class.”

Foushee, in a statement to ABC News, pushed back on Allam’s claims that she is not progressive or present enough, pointing to her endorsement by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and to securing millions for the district.

“My opponent’s claim that I have been absent from my role with zero ability to describe what more she would have done in Congress under the Republican majority demonstrates that she is trying to apply for a job that she does not understand,” Foushee wrote.

Similar primary rumbles are set to play out over the coming months, including in Colorado’s June 30 primaries. Melat Kiros, 28, a Ph.D student and barista, is running against longtime incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, who has represented the state’s 1st Congressional District since 1997.

Kiros previously worked for a law firm and wrote an open letter in 2023 criticizing how law firms were responding in 2023 to pro-Palestinian protests. “I was asked to take the letter down. I said no, and then I was fired,” Kiros said. (The firm, Sidley Austin, did not reply to a request for comment from ABC News.)

Kiros says she draws a direct contrast with DeGette on the U.S.-Israel relationship and that DeGette’s opposition to further offensive aid to Israel does not go far enough.

The debate surrounding U.S. support for Israel, or whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, has sometimes been cast as a divide between younger and older Democrats. (Israel strongly disputes the allegations of committing genocide in Gaza and has said it took care to avoid civilian casualties during its military campaign against Hamas.)

Kiros believes the divide is more complicated than a generational one, but said young people “are seeing on our phones a genocide happening in real time … and want to see representatives who are committed to actually holding Israel accountable and ending this genocide.”

DeGette’s campaign did not provide comment or respond to a request for an interview when contacted by ABC News. She told NBC News in December more broadly, “We must defend our democracy against Donald Trump and work to solve our problems with dignity, justice, and a future grounded in compassion, not cruelty.”

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, says the divide among Democrats over support for Israel — or even how to refer to its actions — reflects a “broader debate within the party about both Israel, but also America’s role in the world and what it should stand for … it’s a moment of flux in that way for the Democratic Party.”

“The moderates are in a tough spot,” he added, as moderates may oppose policies by Israel’s leadership but disagree with the claim that Israel was committing a genocide and feel Israel had the right to defend itself. “It’s a bit harder to message or navigate the complexities of the issue.”

Another flashpoint in some of these primaries is the future of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), especially in the wake of the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis last month.

Jonathan Paz, a 32-year-old former city council member from the Boston suburb of Waltham, is mounting a primary challenge to Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, 62, who currently serves as the House Minority Whip — the second-most powerful Democrat in the House.

Paz told ABC News, “She seems determined to write strongly worded letters. I’m calling to disband ICE and cut all their funding … [people] don’t want that empty rhetoric. They want to dismantle this agency because they want to see the violence stop.”

He added that he feels Clark did not do her job as whip — the whip works to get party members aligned on how to vote — given that 21 House Democrats voted for continuing Department of Homeland Security funding as part of ending a partial government shutdown.

Clark has called for guardrails and restrictions on ICE, and urged voting against the appropriations bill with DHS funding; she also said in early February that she was denied access to an ICE facility in her district while trying to conduct oversight.

“Katherine is doing the work to hold ICE and the Administration accountable and end its reign of terror in our neighborhoods,” Clark’s reelection campaign said in a statement to ABC News.

The progressive challengers more broadly lay bare another ongoing debate within the Democratic Party: whether the party should stand behind incumbents or usher in a new generation of younger and potentially more progressive lawmakers.

“What the voters in this country are fed up with is the corruption of this political system that continues to reward and profit billionaires at the expense of everyone else,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director at the progressive group Justice Democrats, told ABC News.

The group recently unveiled a slate of 12 primary endorsements, including Allam and Kiros.

But others within the Democratic ecosystem have cautioned against reading too much into the progressive versus moderate primary challenges.

David de la Fuente, deputy director for politics and research at the centrist group Third Way, told ABC News he would point to how those challenges are happening often in safely blue districts, not competitive toss-up seats.

He also argued against conflating generational change with an ideological shift to the left.

“Young candidates, whether they’re moderate or progressive, are representing change and a generational shift. That is a tale as old as time,” he said.

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