As the war of words against nuclear weapons escalates, FM Araghchi says he wants to give a speech on “equal scaffolding.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araguchi has called the outlook for direct negotiations with the US over a nuclear program as it is “meaningless” amid growing tensions between the two countries.
Araguchi’s remarks came out Sunday after Trump said he hoped there would be negotiations between the nations aimed at preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons last month in a letter sent to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Trump raised his ante last week and said, “If they don’t make a deal, there’s going to be a bombing.”
“If you want to negotiate, what’s the point of the threat?” Araguchi said on Sunday.
Tehran, who claims it does not seek nuclear weapons, has rejected the Washington overture until now, but says it is open to indirect diplomacy.
Araguchi said Iran wanted to negotiate on an “equal position” with the United States, describing it as a “party that threatens to resort to coercion in violation of the UN Charter and expresses contradictory positions from various officials.”
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For decades, US-led Western countries have accused Tehran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
In 2018, during his first term as president, President Trump signed a contract between Iran and a standing committee member of the UN Security Council to rescue Iran’s sanctions in exchange for a nuclear program.
Iran has accumulated enough fissile material in multiple bombs and has returned to its commitment under the agreement, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is conducting inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites.
In response to the threat of Trump’s war, Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Saturday that the country is ready for war.
“We’re not worried about war at all. We’re not war initiators, but we’re ready for war,” the official IRNA news agency quotes Salami as saying.
However, Tehran’s position in the region appears to have been weakened amid the ongoing war since Gaza and the rest of the country’s ongoing war, Israel’s destruction of Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon and the fall of another important partner, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, last year.
Iran says its nuclear activities are for private purposes only. Israel, the region’s top US ally, is widely believed to have unproclaimed nuclear weapons.
