{"id":271794,"date":"2026-02-03T12:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/271794\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T12:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:21:09","slug":"irans-president-seeks-fair-and-equitable-negotiations-with-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/271794\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s president seeks ‘fair and equitable negotiations’ with the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran\u2019s president said Tuesday that he had instructed the country\u2019s foreign minister to \u201cpursue fair and equitable negotiations\u201d with the United States, the first explicit confirmation from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Islamic Republic\u2019s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.<\/p>\n

The announcement marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who broadly had warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in his country had gone beyond his control. It also signals that the president received support from Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric had previously dismissed.<\/p>\n

Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling in the region.<\/p>\n

The priority of these talks will be to avoid any conflict and de-escalate tensions between the two sides, a regional official told Reuters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the countries invited to the talks at the foreign ministers\u2019 level included Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

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The person said the format of the meetings remained unclear, but that the \u201cmain meeting\u201d would be on Friday and that it was important to start dialogue between the parties to avoid further escalation.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a senior United Arab Emirates official, presidential adviser Anwar Gargash, stressed that Iran needs to reach a nuclear deal with Washington in order to \u201crebuild their relationship with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tDiplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates president Anwar Gargash arrives at the opening ceremony of the summit on peace in Ukraine, at the luxury Burgenstock resort, near Lucerne, on June 15, 2024. (Denis Balibouse \/ POOL \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the region has gone through various calamitous confrontations,\u201d he said during the World Governments Summit in Dubai. \u201cI don\u2019t think we need another one, but I would like to see direct Iranian-American negotiations leading to understandings that we don\u2019t have these issues every other day.\u201d<\/p>\n

But whether Iran and the US can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as US President Donald Trump now has included Iran\u2019s nuclear program in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks.<\/p>\n

Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s president signals talks are possible<\/p>\n

Writing on X, Pezeshkian said in English and Persian that the decision to embark on talks came after \u201crequests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the proposal by the President of the United States for negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists \u2014 one free from threats and unreasonable expectations \u2014 to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The US has yet to acknowledge the talks will take place. A semiofficial news agency in Iran on Monday reported \u2014 then later deleted without explanation \u2014 that Pezeshkian had issued such an order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who held multiple rounds of talks with Witkoff before the 12-day war.<\/p>\n

Khamenei adviser speaks on the nuclear issue<\/p>\n

Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a top Khamenei adviser on security.<\/p>\n

Shamkhani, who now sits on the country\u2019s Supreme National Security Council and who in the 1980s led Iran\u2019s navy, wore a naval uniform as he spoke.<\/p>\n

He suggested that if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, before moving to direct talks if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the US long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran\u2019s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hardliners dismissing them.<\/p>\n

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added. Iran\u2019s officials have indicated that their country\u2019s ballistic missiles were nonnegotiable.<\/p>\n

Asked about whether Russia could take Iran\u2019s enriched uranium like it did in Tehran\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea, saying there was \u201cno reason\u201d to do so. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Russia had \u201clong offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate certain irritants for a number of countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never stockpile nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price in return for this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tMen stand next to a model missile and a nuclear enrichment centrifuge during a rally outside the former US embassy in Tehran as Iranians mark the 46th anniversary of the start of the Iran hostage crisis, on November 4, 2025. (Atta Kenare\/ AFP)<\/p>\n

Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it has enriched uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels and which has no peaceful application.<\/p>\n

The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn\u2019t armed with the bomb. Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed by Israel and the US in June 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quantity of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the stockpile is under rubble, and there is no initiative yet to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous,\u201d Shamkhani said.<\/p>\n

Witkoff traveling to Israel<\/p>\n

Witkoff is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday.\u00a0Mossad chief David Barnea will join Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir at the meeting with Witkoff, according to Channel 12.<\/p>\n

Israel is expected to call for the US to uphold three \u201cno\u201ds during the talks with Iran. These demands are that under any deal with the US, Iran agree to have no nuclear program, no ballistic missile program, and to give no support to armed proxy groups, including terror groups threatening Israel.<\/p>\n

However, Shakhani in his interview rejected giving up uranium enrichment \u2014 a major obstacle in earlier talks with the US. In November, Araghchi said Iran was doing no enrichment in the country because of the US bombing of the nuclear sites.<\/p>\n

Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, according to a White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have talks going on with Iran, we\u2019ll see how it all works out,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see a deal negotiated,\u201d Trump said. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re talking to them, we\u2019re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that\u2019d be great. And if we can\u2019t, probably bad things would happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president has repeatedly said that a large fleet of US military vessels is sailing toward Iran, even as he pushes for diplomatic progress.<\/p>\n

Mike Pompeo, a hardliner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump\u2019s first term, said it was \u201cunimaginable that there can be a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they may come away with some set of understandings,\u201d Pompeo said at Dubai\u2019s World Governments Summit. \u201cBut to think that there\u2019s a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazar Berman and Jacob Magid contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s president said Tuesday that he had instructed the country\u2019s foreign minister to \u201cpursue fair and equitable negotiations\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-271794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}