Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected President Trump’s push for nuclear deal talks between the two nations, arguing the initiative is only a gateway for Washington to impose new demands and limit Tehran’s military capabilities.
“Some coercive governments insist on negotiations. Such negotiations aren’t aimed at solving issues. Their aim is to exert their dominance and impose what they want,” Iran’s supreme leader said in a statement on Saturday. “For coercive governments, negotiations are a means to impose new demands. Iran will definitely not fulfill these new demands.”
Trump said during a Thursday interview with Fox News that he has penned a letter to Khamenei as he looks to negotiate a fresh nuclear deal with Tehran.
“I’ve 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,’” the commander-in-chief said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” The entire interview will air on Sunday.
Khamenei said on Saturday, without directly mentioning the U.S., that “they make new demands regarding the country’s defense capabilities & int’l. capabilities, telling us not to do this, not to meet that person, not to go there, not to produce this, and to limit the range of our missiles to a certain extent.”
“How could anyone accept such things,” he added without mentioning if he received Trump’s letter.
The U.S. and Israel have previously said that Iran should not be able to get a nuclear weapon. Tehran has been working on enriching its uranium to levels near capable of a nuclear weapon.
Iran has said the program is being developed for peaceful purposes, although some of its officials have threatened to develop the atomic bomb if the country is “threatened.”
On Wednesday, Trump reiterated that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon, that he wants to reach a deal with Iran and “reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran into smithereens” are “GREATLY EXAGGERATED.”
“I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. “We should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed. God Bless the Middle East!”
In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement that was brokered during former President Obama’s administration and also ordered the U.S.-led strike on Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.
