Iran’s president said on Tuesday he had ordered the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equal talks” with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington.
It comes after the Mideast country’s bloodshed in protests across the country last month.
The announcement marked a major shift for revolutionary President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had widely warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil 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.
But the potential talks were called into question when US Central Command said on Tuesday that a US warplane had shot down an Iranian jet that was approaching a US airliner.
In an emailed statement, US Central Command said the drone “forcefully approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly towards the ship despite countermeasures taken by US forces operating in international waters.”
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. A Turkish official later said that the location of the talks had not been confirmed but that Turkey was ready to support the process. The official did not provide further details.
The foreign ministers of Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend these talks, if possible, according to this 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 US 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 Iranian nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June.
Iran’s president is showing that talks are possible
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 talks.”
“I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, as long as there is an appropriate environment – free of threats and unreasonable expectations – to pursue fair and just negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, wisdom 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.
On Tuesday, Araghchi spoke by phone with his allies in Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, but did not say anything about the likely location.
Khamenei’s adviser talks about the nuclear issue
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.
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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.
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 gather nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price for this,” 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 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 material is full of waste, and there is no movement to remove it, because it is very dangerous,” said Shamkhani.
Witkoff travels to Israel
Witkoff is expected to meet with Israeli 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 talks 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.
Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, the official said.
“We have ongoing negotiations with Iran, we’ll see how everything goes,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his limit was for fighting Iran, he declined to elaborate.
“I would like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we can work something out, that would be great. And if we can’t, maybe bad things can happen.”
Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state during Trump’s first term, said it was “unthinkable that there would be a deal.”
“I think they may come away with a set of understandings,” Pompeo said at Dubai’s World Governments Summit. “But to think that there is a long-term solution that provides stability and peace in this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but cannot imagine.”
Also on Tuesday, a ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, reported being hailed on the radio by “small armed vessels,” the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.
There was no information to identify the ship, which proceeded to the Persian Gulf. The location of this incident appeared to be in Iranian waters, where officials had warned of military drills by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days.
