Iran's president Pezeshkian: talks with US are meaningless

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said talks with the United States are meaningless, since Tehran has come under military attack after every attempt at dialogue. He made the remarks at a meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who arrived in Tehran on an official visit, the Iranian news agency Fars reports.

“Talks with the enemy are meaningless”

“Every time we sit down at the negotiating table, we immediately face war,” Pezeshkian told his Armenian counterpart. According to him, Iran has already been attacked three times since the talks, which proves the other side has no interest in dialogue. The president added that talks with the enemy are meaningless and Iran does not accept such an approach.

Threat of “new fronts” for the US

A similar position was voiced by Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. According to the Tasnim news agency, he said Washington's mistaken steps toward Iran have deepened America's defeat in the region, and that a new mistake of this kind would lead to “new fronts and even bigger surprises” for the American side. Washington, meanwhile, has stepped up economic pressure on Tehran by imposing new sanctions on Iran's aviation industry.

Dispute over the fate of the Strait of Hormuz

The war against Iran began on February 28 with strikes by the US and Israel, which Washington and Tel Aviv justified, in part, as an effort to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. According to available information, talks between Iran and the US have been deadlocked ever since.

According to AFP, the situation in the region has calmed since the start of September: the US has not attacked Iran since then, though strikes on ships in the Strait of Hormuz continue. Despite the truce reached in April, the memorandum of understanding signed in June, and talks held in September around the UN General Assembly session, Iran and the US have still not agreed on the status of the strategic Strait of Hormuz — a key route for oil exports from the Persian Gulf — and regularly threaten each other with new strikes.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz