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Iran’s president said on Tuesday he had ordered the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Mideast country’s bloody protests across the country last month.
The announcement marked a major shift for revolutionary President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had warned Iranians for weeks that the unrest in his country was beyond his control. It also shows that the President has received support from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks the 86-year-old cleric had previously dismissed.
Turkey has been working behind the scenes for talks to take place there later this week as US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region.
The foreign ministers of Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if possible, according to a regional official who did not want to be named as they are not authorized to speak to journalists.
But whether Iran and the US can reach a deal remains to be seen, especially since President Donald Trump has now included Iran’s nuclear program on the list of demands from Tehran in any negotiations. Trump ordered the bombing of three of Iran’s nuclear sites during a 12-day war that Israel launched against Iran in June 2025.
As the US moves more warships into the Iranian region, the country’s top leader says the attack would start a ‘regional war’ – but President Donald Trump is keeping his list of demands. [Correction: This video has been edited to remove images from a funeral of Iranian regime figures that were erroneously included in this report.]
Writing in X, Pezeshkian said in English and Farsi that the decision came after “requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the US President’s proposal for negotiations.”
“I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, as long as there is an appropriate environment—without threats and unreasonable expectations—to pursue fair and just negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence and propriety,” he said.
The US has not yet confirmed that talks will take place. Iran’s official news agency on Monday reported – later deleted without explanation – that Pezeshkian had issued the order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had held several talks with Witkoff before the 12-day war.
Discussions focused on nuclear issues
Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically affiliated with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, broadcast an interview with Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s top security adviser.
Shamkhani, who is the Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council in the 1980s leading the Iranian army, was wearing a navy uniform when he spoke.
He suggested that if negotiations do take place, they will be informal at first, and then move to direct negotiations if an agreement appears to be within reach. Direct talks with the US have long been a highly charged political issue within Iran’s democratic state, with reformers like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hardliners pushing them away.
The talks will focus on nuclear issues only, he added.
Iran has announced it will conduct live-fire drills on Sunday and Monday in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the US military to warn Tehran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the vital waterway. The CBC’s Julia Chapman and David Des Roches of the Thayer Marshall Institute reveal the latest on the escalating tensions between the two countries.
Asked if Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium as it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea, saying there was no reason to do so. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia “has been providing these services for a long time as a way to potentially reduce provocations in many countries.”
“Iran does not want nuclear weapons, it will not seek nuclear weapons and it will never accumulate nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price for that,” he said.
Iran has been enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, which is a short, technological step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said that Iran was the only country in the world that had reached that level that was not armed with a bomb.
Iran has consistently refused IAEA requests to inspect sites bombed in the June war.
“The amount of enriched uranium is not known, because part of this waste is full of waste, and there are no plans to remove it, because it is very dangerous,” said Shamkhani.
Witkoff is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity.
While in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of the Mossad intelligence service and the head of the Israeli army, according to another official who was not authorized to speak to the media and did not want to be identified.
Israel is expected to ask if any agreement with Iran includes removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping uranium enrichment, preventing the development of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran’s proxies.
However, Shakhani in his interview refused to stop enriching uranium – a major obstacle in previous talks with the US In November, Araghchi said that Iran is not doing anything to enrich the country because of the US bombing of nuclear sites.
