• UAE presidential adviser delivers Trump’s letter to Tehran
• Beijing and Kremlin will hold talks with Iranian officials to discuss the issue
DUBAI: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday rejected the idea of holding negotiations with the United States over a nuclear deal, as a letter arrived from US President Donald Trump calling for such talks.
Trump said last week he had sent a letter to Khamenei proposing nuclear talks but also warning that “there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The letter was handed over to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on Wednesday by Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates.
Khamenei said negotiating with the Trump administration, which he said has excessive demands, “will tighten the knot of sanctions and increase pressure on Iran”.
In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Tehran reacted a year later by violating the deal’s nuclear curbs.
While leaving the door open for a nuclear pact with Tehran, Trump has reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign he applied in his first term as president to isolate Iran from the global economy and drive its oil exports towards zero.
Separately, the Chinese foreign ministry said China and Russia will hold talks with Iranian officials in Beijing on Friday to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue.
Threat of military action ‘unwise’
In response to Trump’s letter that urged negotiations and warned of possible military action if Tehran refused the negotiations, Khamenei said that US threats were “unwise”. “The US is threatening militarism. In my opinion, this threat is unwise,” Khamenei said in a meeting with students. “Iran is capable of retaliating and will definitely inflict a blow.”
Khamenei told a group of university students that Trump’s offer for talks was “a deception aimed at misleading public opinion”, state media reported. “When we know they won’t honour it, what’s the point of negotiating? Therefore, the invitation to negotiate … is a deception of public opinion,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by state media. “We sat down and negotiated for several years, this same person threw the finished, completed and signed agreement off the table and tore it up,” he added, referring to Washington’s withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
‘New and bizarre’
Iran has officially ruled out direct talks as long as sanctions remain, and Khamenei said talks with the US “will not lift sanctions… and will make the sanctions knot tighter”. “Regarding nuclear weapons, it is said that we will not let Iran obtain nuclear weapons. If we wanted to make nuclear weapons, America could not stop us,” Khamenei said.
“The fact that we do not have nuclear weapons and are not seeking nuclear weapons is because we ourselves do not want them.” Khamenei, who has final say in state matters, said Iran “was not seeking war, but if someone takes action, our response will be decisive and certain”
However, Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90pc weapons-grade level, has jumped, the International Atomic Energy Agency said late last month.
Separately, Araqchi denounced a closed-door UN Security Council 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.
Araqchi 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,” Araqchi said according to state media.
