{"id":446064,"date":"2026-02-03T06:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T06:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446064\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T06:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T06:38:11","slug":"irans-president-seeks-fair-and-equitable-negotiations-with-the-united-states-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446064\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s president seeks ‘fair and equitable negotiations’ with the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI \u2013 Iran’s president said Tuesday that he instructed the country\u2019s foreign minister to \u201cpursue fair and equitable negotiations\u201d with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Mideast country’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

The announcement marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian<\/a>, 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’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> for talks that the 86-year-old cleric previously had dismissed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

But whether Iran and the U.S. can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as President Donald Trump now has included Iran’s nuclear program in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites<\/a> during the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June.<\/p>\n

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

Writing on X, Pezeshkian said in English and Farsi that the decision 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 U.S. 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<\/a> 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 militant 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’s navy, wore a naval uniform as he spoke. <\/p>\n

He suggested if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, then moving to direct talks if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the U.S. long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran’s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hard-liners dismissing them. <\/p>\n

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added.<\/p>\n

Asked about whether Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium like it did in Tehran’s 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,” he said. <\/p>\n

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn’t armed with the bomb. <\/p>\n

Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed in the June war. <\/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,” Shamkhani said. <\/p>\n

Witkoff traveling to Israel<\/p>\n

Witkoff is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity. He will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, the official said.<\/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

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI \u2013 Iran’s president said Tuesday that he instructed the country\u2019s foreign minister to \u201cpursue fair and equitable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1568,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,965],"class_list":["post-446064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-masoud-pezeshkian","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}