Supreme leader criticises the US for abandoning the nuclear deal and imposing sanctions, questioning the value of talks.
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the United States’ offer to hold talks on its nuclear programme is an attempt to deceive global public opinion, as a letter arrived from US President Donald Trump urging negotiations.
Trump said last week that he had sent a letter to the Iranian leadership seeking negotiations over a new deal with Tehran to restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
The letter was handed over to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday by Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates.
While the two officials were meeting, the supreme leader told a group of university students that Trump’s offer “is a deception aimed at shaping global opinion”.
“We negotiated for years, reached a complete and signed agreement, and then this individual tore it up,” Khamanei said. “How can one negotiate under such circumstances? … When we know they won’t, what is the point of negotiating?”
He referred to the 2015 nuclear accord that Tehran signed with world powers to curtail its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, during his first term in office, Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal and imposed new economic restrictions on Iran. Tehran responded a year later by violating the deal’s nuclear curbs.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has signalled his desire to negotiate while also reinstating his policy on “maximum pressure” on Iran.
Khamenei said negotiating with the Trump administration, which he said has excessive demands, “will tighten the knot of sanctions and increase pressure on Iran”.
Iran has long denied seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.
“If we wanted to build nuclear weapons, the US would not be able to stop it. We ourselves do not want it,” Khamenei said.
However, Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, has jumped, the International Atomic Energy Agency said late last month.
UNSC meeting
Araghchi also denounced a closed-door United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Wednesday about Iran’s nuclear work as a new process that puts in doubt the goodwill of the states requesting it.
Six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain and the US – requested the meeting over Iran’s expansion of its stock of close to weapons-grade uranium.
Araghchi said Iran would soon have a fifth round of talks with France, Britain and Germany – parties to Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact.
“Our talks with Europeans have been ongoing and will continue … however, any decision by the UN Security Council or board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog to pressure us will put under question the legitimacy of these talks,” Araghchi said, according to state media.
Separately, China’s Foreign Ministry said China and Russia will hold talks with Iranian officials in Beijing on Friday to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue.
