After media reports said the US and Iran were expected to resume negotiations this week, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei threw cold water on the idea, citing public opinion within Iran.
“Public opinion is currently so angry that no one even dares to talk about negotiations and diplomacy,” Baghaei told Iranian media on Saturday, according to The Cradle.
Baghaei’s comments came two days after Axios reported that US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is planning to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oslo the week to restart nuclear negotiations. Amwaj.media also reported that Washington and Tehran were set to restart talks, but it hasn’t been confirmed by either side.
Iranian officials have not ruled out diplomacy with the US but say they need a guarantee that Iran wouldn’t be attacked again during the next negotiations. Israel launched the 12-day war against Iran with full US backing on June 13, two days before US and Iranian officials were set to hold another round of nuclear talks.
Iranian officials have also vowed that Tehran will restart its nuclear enrichment program despite threats from President Trump that he would bomb the country again if it did so. The president told reporters on Friday that he believed the US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities set the sites back “permanently,” but he acknowledged Iran could resume its enrichment program at another location.
“I would think they’d have to start at a different location. And if they did start, it would be a problem,” Trump said.
Also on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that its employees in Iran had left the country after Tehran took steps to suspend cooperation with the nuclear watchdog over what Iranian officials saw as its role in providing justification for the US-Israeli war.
Neither the IAEA nor the US had evidence that Iran was seeking a bomb before the war, but the IAEA’s Board of Governors passed a resolution on June 12, the day before the bombing campaign began, that alleged Tehran was not living up to its commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The claim was mainly based on alleged nuclear activity from over 20 years ago, which posed no risk of proliferation.
Iran has also alleged that Israel obtained the names of Iranian nuclear scientists it has killed from the IAEA, and has been critical of the watchdog for remaining silent on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Israel is estimated to have somewhere between 90 and 300 nuclear weapons, and its nuclear arsenal gets very little attention since neither the US nor Israel acknowledges its existence.
While taking steps to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, Iran has also said it’s still committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and that it does not seek nuclear weapons.
