Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called US demands for Iran to eliminate its civilian nuclear enrichment program “nonsense” and said he doesn’t think the negotiations with the US would “bring results.”
Iranian officials have made clear that the idea of dismantling Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program is a non-starter, but US officials have continued to make the demand, including Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, who has been leading negotiations with Iran.
“For them to say, ‘we won’t allow uranium enrichment,’ is utter nonsense,” Khamenei said at an event marking the one-year anniversary of the death of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
“We are waiting for anyone’s permission. The Islamic Republic has certain policies and approaches, and it will pursue its own policy,” Khamenei added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, who has been leading negotiations with the US, has also had harsh words for the US demand for Iran to eliminate its enrichment program and said Tehran has yet to agree to hold a fifth round of talks.
“A date has been suggested, but we have not yet accepted it,” Aragchi said, according to Reuters. “We are witnessing positions on the US side that do not go along with any logic and are creating problems for the negotiations. That’s why we have not determined the next round of talks, we are reviewing the matter and hope logic will prevail.”
The Trump administration is under significant pressure from Republicans in Congress to settle for nothing less than a deal that eliminates Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. More than 200 GOP lawmakers made the demand in a recent letter to President Trump, which was likely an effort to sabotage diplomacy to bring the US and Iran closer to war.
Trump has been threatening that the US will attack Iran if a deal isn’t reached on its nuclear program, even though his intelligence agencies recently reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Tehran is building a bomb or that Khamenei has reversed his ban on the development of nuclear weapons.
