Willing to reopen US nuclear talks if treated with ‘dignity and respect’: Iran

Tehran: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, expressed willingness to restart nuclear talks with the US as long as the country is treated with ‘dignity and respect’, The Guardian reported.

Pointing to requests from intermediaries to reopen talks with Trump administration, Araghchi claimed that his country had no undeclared nuclear sites.

Citing security reasons he said that Iran could not yet allow the UN nuclear inspectorate to visit the nuclear sites bombed during Israeli-US attack.

In what appears to be feigning confidence, he said that Iran emerged stronger both militarily and psychologically from the Israel-US attack in June.

However, he made it clear that Iran had ‘an inalienable right to enrich uranium domestically that it will never give up’, which led to impasse in talks.

The previous talks between Washington and Tehran came to an end when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear sites on June 12 with US support.

After the 12 day war, the President Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘obliterated’. Following which, European countries reimposed sanctions on Iran which the country said had no major impact.

Back then Iranian officials had the feeling that a ‘magic solution’ to uranium enrichment issue was made following the agreement of enriching uranium with American involvement at Iran-based consortium.

This arrangement would have allowed Iran to enrich uranium while the US could ensure Iran’s nuclear programme was exclusively peaceful.

However the agreement with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff collapsed due to ‘spoilers in Washington, officials reportedly claimed.

Iranian official however expressed hope in reviving the consortium offer in some way in the event of restarting the talks.

Though Trump last week said that he had received messages from Iran seeking to reopen negotiations, Iranian officials however reportedly said they did not receive ‘coherent offers’ from the US.