Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday opened the door to renewed negotiations with the United States over his country's nuclear program, telling its civilian government there was “no harm" in engaging with its “enemy”, The Associated Press reported.
Khamenei's remarks set clear red lines for any talks taking place under the government of new President Masoud Pezeshkian and he renewed his warnings that Washington cannot be trusted.
However, his comments mirror those around the time of the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, noted AP.
“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations,” Khamenei said, according to a transcript on his official website. "There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them.”
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, also warned Pezeshkian's Cabinet, “Do not trust the enemy.”
Asked for comment, the US State Department told AP, “We will judge Iran’s leadership by their actions, not their words.”
“We have long said that we ultimately view diplomacy as the best way to achieve an effective, sustainable solution with regard to Iran’s nuclear program,” it said. “However, we are far away from anything like that right now given Iran’s escalations across the board, including its nuclear escalations and its failure to cooperate" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
“If Iran wants to demonstrate seriousness or a new approach, they should stop nuclear escalations and start meaningfully cooperating with the IAEA,” it said.
Then-US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018. In response, Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 agreement.
The Biden administration sought to return to the deal, but those efforts were unsuccessful.
In recent months, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released several reports indicating that Iran has accelerated its uranium enrichment.
A report from late June by the UN atomic energy agency found that Iran has installed half the advanced uranium-enriching machines it said earlier it would quickly add to its Fordow site but has not yet brought them online.
The IAEA's previous report determined that Iran has started up new cascades of advanced centrifuges and plans to install others in the coming weeks after facing criticism over its nuclear program.
The UN agency released a report at the end of May which found that Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.
In July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran is capable of producing fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within "one or two weeks."
The Secretary of State blamed the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear capabilities on Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“When this administration came in, we tried to pursue again, nuclear diplomacy with Iran, because if you could at least take one problem off the board, which is Iran potentially with a nuclear weapon, that’s inherently a good thing,” said Blinken.
"Instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, (Iran) is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that," he added.