itstargetnews
Iran The president said on Tuesday that 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 while tensions with Washington remain high.
It comes after a 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.
But possible talks have been called into question when OUR Central Command said Tuesday that a U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone approaching a U.S. aircraft carrier.
In an emailed statement, US Central Command said the drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly towards the ship despite de-escalation measures taken by US forces operating in international waters”.
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. A Turkish official later said the location of the talks was uncertain, but that Turkey was ready to support the process. The official did not provide additional details.
The foreign ministers of Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they take place, according to the 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 since US 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 that Israel launched against Iran in June.
The Iranian president signals that talks are possible
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 – one free of threats and unreasonable expectations – to continue fair and equal 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.
Araghchi spoke by phone with his counterparts from Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait on Tuesday, but made no mention of a possible location.
Khamenei’s adviser talks about the nuclear issue
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.
Get the latest national news
For news that affects Canada and the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you as they happen.
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 do occur, they will initially be indirect and then move to direct talks if an agreement appears to be 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.
Asked whether 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 stockpile 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 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 travels to Israel
Witkoff is expected to meet with Israeli 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.
Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, later in the week for talks between Russia and Ukraine, the official said.
“Talks are underway with Iran, we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.
“I’d like to see a deal on a deal,” Trump said. “Right now we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that would be great. And if we can’t, bad things would probably happen.”
Mike Pompeo, an Iran hardliner who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump’s first term, said it was “unthinkable that there could be a deal.”
“I think they could come out with a certain set of deals,” Pompeo said at a world government summit in Dubai. “But to think that there is a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the Ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for, but it’s unimaginable to me.”
Also on Tuesday, a ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf, reported being radioed by “numerous small armed vessels”, the UK military’s Merchant Marine Operations Center said.
There was no information on the identification of the ship, which continued to the Persian Gulf. The site of the incident appears to have been in Iranian territorial waters, where officials have warned in recent days of a naval exercise by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
