•US President Donald Trump
Iran has made the resumption of talks with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme conditional on Washington refraining from further attacks, according to a BBC interview with Iran’s deputy foreign minister broadcast today.
Majid Takht-Ravanchi said the U.S. administration told Iran, via mediators, that it would like to return to talks, but the U.S. had “not made their position clear” on the “very important question” of whether it would launch more attacks.
At the NATO summit last week, Trump announced new talks with Iran for this week but did not provide details.
Recently, he ordered strikes on Iran’s heavily secured nuclear facilities.
When asked on Friday whether he would order further bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites if concerns about Tehran’s uranium enrichment arose again, Trump said “without question, absolutely.”
He reiterated that Iran must not have nuclear weapons and claimed the recent attacks had set the nuclear programme back by years.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi, in an interview broadcast yesterday, said Iran could resume enriching uranium within months.
Iran will insist on its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC, rejecting accusations that the country is secretly working on developing a nuclear bomb.
He said since Iran had been “denied access to nuclear material” for its nuclear research programme, we had to “rely on ourselves.”
He said the level and capacity of nuclear enrichment can be discussed “but to say that you should not have enrichment, you should have zero enrichment, and if you do not agree, we will bomb you – that is the law of the jungle.”
