Iran said Friday it would refuse to hold nuclear talks with the US while it was still under attack from Israel — after President Trump essentially gave a two-week deadline to allow for renewed negotiations.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi vowed there was no room for negotiations with the United States “until Israeli aggression stops.”
“Americans want to negotiate and have sent messages several times, but we clearly said that as long as this aggression doesn’t stop, there’s no place for talk of dialogue,” he said in an address on state television.
He accused the US, too, of being a “partner to Israeli crime against Iran.”
The minister’s defiant pledge came as he sat down with top European diplomats for the first face-to-face meeting between Western and Iranian officials since the start of the conflict.
Araqchi met with his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief in Geneva Friday, where the Europeans tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations with the US.
Ahead of the meeting, Araghchi reiterated that Iran was open to “dialogue” with others, but not to negotiations.
”As for others, if they seek dialogue, not negotiations, which don’t make sense right now, we have no problem with that,” he said.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that after three and a half hours of talks, the Europeans were “keen to continue ongoing discussions and negotiations with Iran.”
Lammy added that the Europeans were clear, though, that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and that “a window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”
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He said they urged Tehran to continue talks with the US about a nuclear deal.
Meanwhile, retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane warned Friday that he doesn’t believe Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will ever agree to no more uranium enrichment.
“The Ayatollah going into this, and the reason why he has never made a deal, is because he had built an enterprise to survive an attack — and he believes they can absorb the attack, survive it, recover it, and then rebuild,” Gen. Keane said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”
“That is where this guy is. And I don’t see him, in the near term, making the deal here whatsoever,” he added.
President Trump has been weighing whether to attack Iran and said Thursday he’d make a final decision in the “next two weeks” as he still holds out hope for renewed negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Israel, for its part, expected the European officials to “demand a complete rollback” of the Iranian nuclear program during the high-stakes meeting, an Israeli diplomatic source told CNN.
“We expect the European foreign ministers to take a firm stance vis-a-vis Iran and demand a complete rollback of the nuclear program, the dismantling of its ballistic missile arsenal and program, and putting an end to its regional terrorist activities and active support for its terrorist proxies,” the source said.
With Post wires
