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.
