Iran said on Monday that there would be no new nuclear conversations with the United States if they were conditional on Tehran giving up its uranium enrichment activities.
Washington and Tehran had been engaged in several rounds of negotiations trying to find an agreement on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, but Israel derailed the conversations as it launched a wave of surprise attacks on its regional nemesis and touched 12 days of war.
Since the end of the hostilities, both Iran and the United States have signaled the will to return to the table, although Tehran has said it will not waive its right to the peaceful use of nuclear power.
“If the negotiations are to be conditional on stopping enrichment, such negotiations will not take place,” became Ali Velayati, an adviser to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quoted as saying by the state news agency Irna.
The comments came after the Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Iran had not established a date for any meeting with the United States.
“For now, there is no specific date, time or location with regard to this case,” Baqaei said of plans for a meeting between Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi and US envoy Steve Witkoff.
Araghchi and Witkoff had previously failed to enter into an agreement after five rounds of negotiations that began in April and were the highest level of contact between the two countries since Washington abandoned a milestone nuclear agreement in 2018.
The Omani-media negotiations were stopped when Israel launched its surprise attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13, when the United States later joined its allies and performed limited strikes.
“We have been serious in diplomacy and the negotiation process, we went in with good faith, but all of which were witnessing before the sixth round, the Zionist regime committed in coordination with the United States Military Aggression against Iran,” Baqaei said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday in a statement that Iran “supports diplomacy and constructive commitment”.
“We still believe that the window of diplomacy remains open and we will seriously pursue this peaceful path.”
Israel and Western nations accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons, a prosecutor Tehran has consistently denied.
Although it is the only non-nuclear weapon power to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity-tight at the level needed for a war head has been uns Atomic Energy Watchdog that it had no indication that Iran was working to arm its stocks.
Sanctions
Israel’s offensive, as it said was aimed at averting a nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic, killed nuclear scientists and top -ranked military officers, but also hit residential areas.
The United States launched its own set strikes on June 22 and hit Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Fordo in Qom Province south of Tehran as well as nuclear locations in Isfahan and Natanz.
Iran responded with missile and drone attacks targeted at Israeli cities, and attacked an American base in Qatar in return for Washington’s strikes.
The extent of the damage to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program remains unknown and Baqaei said it was “still under investigation”.
Pezeshkian warned in his latest statement of “even more crushing retribution” to any “new aggression against Iranian territory”.
Baqaei said on Monday that Iran remained in contact with Britain, France and Germany, the three European parties in the nuclear agreement in 2015 from which the United States later withdrew.
Europeans have threatened to trigger the “Snapback” mechanism of the Agreement that allows the reintroduction of UN sanctions in the event of non -compliance.
Baqaei said Tehran was “in continuous contact with these three countries,” but added that he “can’t give an exact date” for the next meeting with them.
There was “no legal, moral or political basis” to reintroduce sanctions, according to Baqaei, when Iran was still obliged to the 2015 agreement.
He added that such a movement would be met with a “appropriate and proportionate” reaction following Iranian threats of leaving the global nuclear non-spreading treaty.
After the United States withdrew from the 2015 agreement with Iran during Donald Trump’s first period as president, Tehran began rolling his obligations to the agreement that limited its nuclear activities in return for sanctions.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran still considers itself a member of JCPOA,” Baqaei said, referring to the 2015 agreement.
