{"id":446501,"date":"2026-02-03T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446501\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T12:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:13:11","slug":"irans-president-seeks-negotiations-with-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446501\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s president seeks negotiations with the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Iran\u2019s president said Tuesday 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. Foreign ministers from Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they happen, according to a regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have permission to speak to journalists. <\/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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\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

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\u2019t 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,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

While in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of the Mossad intelligence service and the Israeli military\u2019s chief of staff, according to another official who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. <\/p>\n

Israel is expected to ask that any agreement with Iran include removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping the enrichment of uranium, limiting the creation of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran\u2019s proxies.<\/p>\n

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

Witkoff later will travel to Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, 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

Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner 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

Also Tuesday, a ship transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, reported being hailed on the radio \u201cby numerous small armed vessels,\u201d the British military\u2019s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. <\/p>\n

There was no identifying information on the vessel, which continued into the Persian Gulf. The position of the incident appeared to be in Iranian territorial waters, where officials had warned of a naval drill by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Iran\u2019s president said Tuesday he instructed the country\u2019s foreign minister to \u201cpursue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[6740,209875,23,1927,5620,1574,1930,16786,12,793,209877,801,1570,1569,1568,32523,1576,3,1577,111,200479,17569,209876,86697,8835,21,19,22,20,25,24,964,965],"class_list":["post-446501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-abbas-araghchi","tag-ali-shamkhani","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bombings","tag-diplomacy","tag-dmitry-peskov","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-international-atomic-energy-agency","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-israel-government","tag-masoud-pezeshkian","tag-mike-pompeo","tag-military-and-defense","tag-news","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-politics","tag-send-to-apple-news","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-turkey-government","tag-united-arab-emirates-government","tag-united-kingdom-government","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446501","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=446501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}