4 hours agoIranian official reveals ‘non-starter’ allegedly stalling next round of face-to-face talks with US
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh insisted that the country would not hand over any enriched uranium to the United States, rebutting an earlier claim from President Donald Trump.
“I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to United States,” Khatibzadeh told The Associated Press in an interview published Saturday.
“This is 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 non-starters,” he continued.
The rebuke represented Iran’s first public commentary on the matter after Trump said Friday that they had “agreed to everything,” including a demand to give up enriched uranium.
“They’ve agreed to give us back the nuclear dust that’s way underground because of the attack we made with the B-2 bombers,” Trump told reporters Friday
Iranian cessation of uranium enrichment has long been a hardline for Trump.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei, however, called uranium enrichment “as sacred to us as Iranian soil,” adding that Iran will not be transferring uranium “under any circumstances,” according to CBS News.
Khatibzadeh called the American terms “maximalist” and claimed they prevented a negotiation from moving forward.
“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.
Khatibzadeh also claimed another sticking point was U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, referring to them as “economic terrorism.”
“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 to revolt against the political structure inside Iran,” he told the AP.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.