Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said Iran is willing to negotiate with the US about its nuclear programme on the basis of respect, but did not comment on claims by Donald Trump that Iran was arranging a meeting with the US.
The US president, who has threatened to intervene in Iran, said on Sunday such a meeting was being planned, but added it could be derailed by the crackdown on protesters.
“The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said communication lines with the US remained open but that the messages from the US were “often contradictory”.
Araghchi, briefing foreign diplomats in Tehran with his first remarks following Trump’s comments, did not depart from the official line since the US and Israel bombed its nuclear installations last June that Iran could only hold talks on the basis of respect.
He also claimed the situation in Iran had “come under total control” as authorities carry out a brutal crackdown against nationwide anti-regime protests, now in their 16th day.
Trump suggested in his comments on Air Force One that Iran was seeking talks because “I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States. Iran wants to negotiate.”
But asked whether Iran’s leaders had crossed a red line with the crackdown on protests, he replied: “It looks like it. There seems to be some people killed who weren’t supposed to be killed.”
Pressed about his plans to intervene militarily, Trump said: “We’re looking at it very seriously, the military’s looking at it. And there’s a couple options.” An administration strategy meeting on Iran will consider the options in the next 24 hours.
Trump also said he planned to speak with Elon Musk about restoring internet in Iran – where authorities have blacked out services for four days – using his Starlink service.
Trump’s claims of discussions about talks – if true – would suggest a strong private debate inside the Iranian government about the essential need to lift US sanctions through a nuclear deal.
It is widely accepted inside the reformist-led government that without US sanctions being lifted, the country’s economic problems, the spark for the protests, will continue.
But there has been no sign that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the hardliner-dominated parliament are prepared to endorse such talks, and the often fantastical explanations for the protests, or denial of their existence, relieves Khamenei of a need for a policy response.
Araghchi described Trump’s support for the protest movement that has roiled the country since late December as “interference in the internal affairs of countries […] No government has the right to threaten military intervention under the pretext of protests or human rights”.
He also insisted that Iran did not want war, but was prepared to give a full response to any aggression.
On Saturday Araghchi met the key external mediator on Iran’s nuclear programme, Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi, Oman’s minister of foreign affairs.
However, if messages about negotiations had been sent to Trump, his comments may make it less likely they will occur since there will be a political backlash about talking to a man that Iran believes duplicitously held five rounds of talks with Iran before bombing its nuclear sites days before the sixth round.
The reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, often accused of weakness, initially acknowledged the legitimacy of the protests and the need for economic reforms to weed out corruption and control the exchange rate, and thereby inflation. A man driven by the need for consensus, he is unlikely to change the thinking of the supreme leader or the security services.
