Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ridiculed the United States for demanding Tehran restrict the enrichment as negotiations between the two nations hang in the balance.
“Agreeing to things and asking to stop enriching the Uranium is nonsense. No one in Iran is waiting for others' permission,” Khamenei said on Tuesday, as reported by the Iranian state media.
He said he wasn’t confident that talks would “bring results.”
Since last month, Washington and Tehran have held four rounds of negotiations mediated by Oman, which are aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
However, the constant clashes between the two sides have brought the next rounds of negotiations into doubt.
US President Donald Trump ditched the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by Iran and world powers during his last term in office.
Intent on striking a new deal since his return to power in January, he has revived his “maximum pressure” approach against Iran, warning last week that talks needed to “move quickly or something bad is going to happen.”
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Tehran on Tuesday confirmed that it has received and is currently reviewing a US proposal, but Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, had said the previous day that talks would fail if Washington insisted that Tehran refrain from domestic enrichment of uranium, which the US says is a possible pathway to developing nuclear bombs.
According to IAEA reports last year, Iran has enriched Uranium to 60 per cent, which is much more than the permissible limit of 3-4 per cent for civilian purposes. It has repeatedly insisted its program is for peaceful purposes and is “non-negotiable.”
However, US negotiator Steve Witkoff has dubbed the continuation of the program a “red line.” On Sunday, he said that the US “cannot allow even 1 per cent of an enrichment capability.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, said on Sunday that a deal ensuring Iran would not have nukes was “within reach.”
However, he underlined, Iran would continue enriching uranium “with or without a deal.”
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