Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also suggested that “there should be no negotiations with such a government,” but stopped short of issuing a direct order not to interact with Washington.
Iran's supreme leader said on Friday that Negotiations with the United States “are not intelligent, wise or honorable” after President Donald Trump raised the possibility of resuming nuclear talks with Tehran.
The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei He also suggested that “there should be no negotiations with such a government,” but stopped short of issuing a direct order not to interact with Washington.
Khamenei's remarks undermine months of signals from Tehran to the United States that it wanted to negotiate over its rapidly advancing nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of crushing economic sanctions worth billions of dollars. After Khamenei's comments, the Iranian rial sank to a record low of 872.000 rials per dollar in after-hours trading.
What will happen next remains unclear, particularly as the reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian promised as recently as Thursday to engage in dialogue with the West.
Khamenei's remarks to air force officers in Tehran appeared to contradict his own earlier statements in August that opened the door to talks. However, Khamenei, 85, has always been careful with his comments about negotiating with the West. That includes balancing the demands of reformists inside the country who want talks against hardline elements within Iran's theocracy, including the Revolutionary Guard paramilitary.
Khamenei noted that Trump unilaterally withdrew from the previous nuclear deal under which Iran sharply limited its uranium enrichment and overall stockpiling of the material, in exchange for the removal of crushing sanctions.
“The Americans did not keep their part of the agreement,” Khamenei said. “The same person who is in office today broke the agreement. He said he would do it, and he did it.”
He added: “This is an experience we must learn from. We negotiated, we made concessions, we reached agreements, but we did not achieve the results we sought. And despite all its flaws, the other side ultimately violated and destroyed the agreement.”
Contradictory messages from Iran and Trump
It is unclear what prompted Khamenei’s comments. However, they come after Trump suggested he wanted to negotiate with Tehran, even as he signed an executive order to reimpose his “maximum pressure” approach on Iran on Tuesday.
“I will sign it, but I hope we don’t have to use it much.”, he said from the Oval Office. “We will see if we can work out or work out a deal with Iran.”
“We don’t want to be tough on Iran. We don’t want to be tough on anybody,” Trump added. “But they just can't have a nuclear bomb.”
Trump followed up with another online message on Wednesday, saying: “Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran to smithereens, ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.”
“I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which allows Iran to grow and prosper peacefully,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We should start working on it immediately and celebrate it in the Middle East when it is signed and completed.” He did not elaborate.
Nuclear enrichment raises concerns
Khamenei, like other Iranian leaders, uses elliptical comments to indirectly govern policy without pigeonholing himself into any one decision. As supreme leader, he has also created a vast bureaucracy that competes with itself for influence, even with its civilian leadership under Pezeshkian.
As recently as Thursday, Pezeshkian suggested that Iran could open itself up to even more inspections by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“They (can) come and inspect a hundred times more because we are not supposed to go after” a nuclear weapon, Pezeshkian told foreign diplomats.
Iranian diplomats have long pointed to Khamenei's preaching as a binding fatwa, or religious edict, that Iran will not build an atomic bomb.
Iran has long insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. However, it now enriches uranium to 60% purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iranian officials increasingly suggest that Tehran might try to make an atomic bomb. U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has not yet begun a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran calls US sanctions on oil trading companies “unjustified.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Ministry separately criticized the U.S. Treasury’s decision to impose sanctions on Thursday against companies trading sanctioned Iranian crude oil with China. The Treasury described the companies as forming an “international network to facilitate the shipment of millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei called the Treasury's decision "completely unjustified and contrary to international norms and regulations."
(With information from AP)
Source: INFOBAE
God said in the Bible that He will set His throne in Elam, which is Iran, and destroy her king and officials (Ayatollahs?). Perhaps this is the time when this prophecy is coming to pass. 🙏