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Iran’s president said on Tuesday he had instructed the country’s foreign minister to “continue fair and equal negotiations” with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as tensions with Washington remain high after the bloody crackdown on protests across the country last month in the Middle Eastern country.
The announcement marked a major U-turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who for weeks had warned Iranians broadly that the turmoil in his country was out of his control. It also signals that the president has received support from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric had previously rejected.
Turkey has been working behind the scenes to get the talks there later this week as US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff tours the region.
Foreign ministers from Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they take place, according to a regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
But whether Iran and the US can reach a deal remains to be seen, especially as President Donald Trump has now included Iran’s nuclear program on Tehran’s list of demands in any negotiations. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war launched by Israel against Iran in June 2025.
As the US moves more warships into range of Iran, the country’s supreme leader says an attack would start a ‘regional war’ – but President Donald Trump is sticking to his list of demands. (Correction: This video has been edited to remove images from funerals of Iranian regime figures that were mistakenly included in this report.)
Writing on X, Pezeshkian said in English and Farsi that the decision came after “requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the United States president’s proposal for negotiations.”
“I have instructed my foreign minister, provided there is an appropriate environment – an environment free of threats and unreasonable expectations – to continue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence and expediency,” he said.
The US has yet to acknowledge that the talks will take place. Iran’s semi-official news agency reported on Monday – then later deleted it without explanation – that Pezeshkian had issued such an order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had held multiple rounds of talks with Witkoff before the 12-day war.
The talks focus on nuclear issues
Late on Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically linked to the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s top security adviser.
Shamkhani, who now sits on the country’s Supreme National Security Council and led Iran’s navy in the 1980s, wore a navy uniform as he spoke.
He suggested that if negotiations were to take place, they would initially be indirect and then move to direct negotiations if an agreement appeared possible. Direct negotiations with the US have long been a high political issue within Iran’s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian championing them and hardliners rejecting them.
The talks will focus exclusively on nuclear issues, he added.
Iran announced it would conduct live-fire drills in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and Monday, prompting the US military to warn Tehran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the key waterway. CBC’s Julia Chapman and Thayer Marshall Institute’s David Des Roches break down the latest news on the growing tensions between the two countries.
Asked if Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium as it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea, saying there was “no reason” to do so. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia “has long offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate certain irritations for a number of countries.”
“Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, will not seek nuclear weapons and will never accumulate nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay the price for that,” he said.
Iran was enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, a short, technical step beyond weapons grade. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran was the only country in the world that had enriched itself to such a degree that it was not armed with a bomb.
Iran has rejected requests from the IAEA to inspect sites bombed in the June war.
“The amount of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the stockpile is under the rubble, and there is no initiative yet to extract it, because it is extremely dangerous,” Shamkhani said.
Witkoff is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.
While in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of Mossad intelligence and the chief of staff of the Israeli army, according to another official who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israel is expected to demand that any deal with Iran include removing the country’s enriched uranium, halting uranium enrichment, limiting ballistic missile development and ending Tehran’s support for lawmakers.
However, in his interview, Shakhani rejected abandoning uranium enrichment — a major obstacle in earlier negotiations with the US. In November, Araghchi said Iran was not enriching uranium in the country because of US bombing of nuclear sites.
