Tehran and Washington signalled a possible softening in nuclear tensions yesterday, with Iran insisting it has no ambitions to build nuclear weapons and the US expressing readiness to resume talks aimed at resolving the long-standing standoff.
A few hours after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN General Assembly that Iran will never seek to build a nuclear bomb, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff said “we have no desire to hurt them”.
“We’re talking to them. And why wouldn’t we? We talk to everybody. As well we should. That’s the job. Our job is to solve things,” he told the Concordia summit in New York.
Prior to a 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimise any risk of weaponisation.
Tehran accuses Washington of “betraying diplomacy” and the nuclear talks have stopped since the war.
One Iranian insider told Reuters that “several messages have been conveyed to Washington for resumption of talks via mediators in the past weeks, but Americans have not responded”.
On Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on key state matters such as foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear programme, ruled out negotiations with the US under threat.
The US, its European allies and Israel accuse Tehran of using its nuclear programme as a veil for efforts to try to develop the capability to produce weapons. Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.
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