Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected the idea of negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme, as Tehran confirmed receiving a letter from President Donald Trump.
Last week, Trump said the letter proposed talks on a deal that would prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and avert possible military action.
Although Khamenei said he had not seen the letter, which was delivered by an official from the United Arab Emirates, he dismissed it as a “deception of public opinion”.
“When we know they won’t honour it, what’s the point of negotiating?” he asked, referring to Trump’s decision to abandon the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal during his first term.
He warned that Iran would retaliate in the event of strikes on its nuclear facilities.
“Iran is not seeking war, but if the Americans or their agents take a wrong step, our response will be decisive and certain, and the one who will suffer the most harm is America,” he said.
The supreme leader, who has the final say on all state matters, also reiterated that Iran was “not interested in nuclear weapons”.
Ten years ago, the country agreed a historic deal with six world powers – China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the US – to limit its nuclear activities and allow monitoring by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in return for sanctions relief.
However, Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the accord in 2018 and reinstated crippling US economic sanctions. He labelled it “the worst deal in history”, saying it did too little to stop Iran’s potential pathway to building a nuclear bomb.
Iran responded by increasingly breaching the terms of the deal, particularly those limiting the production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants but also to build nuclear weapons.
The IAEA said last month that Iran had stockpiled almost 275kg (606lb) of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which is near weapons grade. That would theoretically be enough, if enriched to 90%, for six nuclear bombs.
Both the US and Israel have warned that they will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Israel has threatened to strike Iranian nuclear facilities if necessary.
Last year, Israel said it hit part of Iran’s nuclear programme during strikes that it carried out in response to an Iranian missile attack.
In a TV interview broadcast last Friday, Trump said: “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal. I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. They’re great people.”
“I have written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate,’ because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them,” he added.
The White House has not given any details about the contents of the letter, which Iran said was handed to Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi by UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash.
Although the supreme leader dismissed the idea of negotiations with the US, Iran’s mission to the UN did say in a statement on Sunday that it might consider talks “if the objective is… to address concerns vis-Ã -vis any potential militarisation of Iran’s nuclear programme”.
Araqchi also said on Wednesday that nuclear talks with the UK, France and Germany were “ongoing”, while the Chinese foreign ministry said China, Russia and Iran would discuss the “Iranian nuclear issue” at a trilateral meeting in Beijing on Friday.
