Tehran says maximalist US demands block new face-to-face talks

Iran said on Saturday (April 18) it was still not ready to enter a new round of face-to-face talks with the United States, with Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh accusing Washington of refusing to drop what Tehran sees as “maximalist” demands on key issues.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of a diplomacy forum in Turkey, Khatibzadeh said the two sides had exchanged many messages, but no in-person meeting would take place until a “framework agreement” was finalised.

“We are still not there yet to move on to an actual meeting because there are issues that the Americans have not yet abandoned their maximalist position,” Khatibzadeh said.

He also dismissed suggestions that Iran would hand over its enriched uranium to the United States, directly rejecting remarks made by President Donald Trump.

“I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to the United States,” Khatibzadeh said. “This is a non-starter, and I can assure you that while we are ready to address any concerns that we do have, we’re not going to accept things that are nonstarters.”

On Friday, Trump said the United States would enter Iran and “get all the nuclear dust”, referring to 970 pounds (440 kilograms) of enriched uranium believed to be buried beneath nuclear sites heavily damaged by US military strikes last year.

Khatibzadeh declined to discuss the details of the negotiations or identify the unresolved issues, but said Washington needed to respond to Iran’s main concerns, including sanctions.

“The other sides also should understand and address our main concerns, which are illegal unilateral sanctions that Americans have imposed on Iranians and this economic terrorism which has targeted Iranian people to suffocate them and make them revolt against the political structure inside Iran,” he said.

On the regional conflict, Khatibzadeh said Iran’s actions had been defensive and came in response to what he described as unprovoked aggression in the middle of negotiations. He also repeated Tehran’s position that the ceasefire should cover Lebanon, where Israel had been fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

When the US and Iran announced a temporary truce last week, Pakistan and Iran said it also applied to Lebanon. Israel, and later the United States, rejected that interpretation. Israel then carried out airstrikes on central Beirut, prompting Iran to say it was once again closing the Strait of Hormuz. After a truce in Lebanon took effect on Friday, Iran said it had reopened the waterway.

“Iran negotiated with good faith, accepted a ceasefire and told everybody that this ceasefire should include all countries, including Lebanon,” Khatibzadeh said. “Then the other side said that it is not committed to this and then started atrocities.”

Asked whether Iran would respond to renewed Israeli attacks on Lebanon despite the ceasefire, Khatibzadeh said: “Iran has no option but to stop aggressors once and forever.”

Trump, meanwhile, said Israel was “prohibited” by the United States from launching further strikes on Lebanon and declared that “enough is enough” in the Israel-Hezbollah war. The State Department later said the restriction applied only to offensive attacks, not to actions taken in self-defence.

Khatibzadeh added that a “new protocol” for the Strait of Hormuz would be introduced as part of talks with Washington and said it would “remain open and safe for all civilian passage”. Trump has also said the US blockade of the strait would remain in place and that attacks would resume if no agreement was reached with Iran.

AP News