Iran’s Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran is “ready to begin negotiations if they take place on an equal footing”, if talks are not under duress and do not extend to Iran’s missile programme, The Guardian reports.
Araghchi said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran, just as it is ready for negotiations, is also ready for war.”
This comes as the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group into the US Central Command area of responsibility, close to Iranian waters, has sharpened the sense that a broader confrontation may be taking shape, according to the BBC.
The deployment, which comes amid the most extensive and violent crackdown on protests in Iran in recent memory, underscores how close Washington and Tehran may now be to a direct showdown, closer than at any point in recent years.
The Guardian reports that, after meetings with Turkish diplomats yesterday, Araghchi said Iran was “ready to begin negotiations if they take place on an equal footing, based on mutual interests and mutual respect”.
He said there were no immediate plans to meet with US officials, adding: “I want to state firmly that Iran’s defensive and missile capabilities will never be subject to negotiation.”
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he hoped to avoid military action and suggested talks with Iran were still possible, even as the US deployed another warship to the Middle East, joining the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers.
He told reporters Iran had to do “two things” to avoid military action. “Number one, no nuclear. And number two, stop killing protesters.”
He added: “We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now, and it would be great if we didn’t have to use them.”
According to The Guardian, Iran has blamed the US and Israel for the protests that erupted in late December over economic grievances, and were brutally suppressed. Activist groups estimate as many as 30,000 were killed in the ensuing crackdown.
The BBC says that Iranian leaders find themselves squeezed between a protest movement increasingly demanding the removal of the regime itself and a US president who has kept his intentions deliberately opaque, fuelling anxiety not only in Tehran but across an already volatile region.
[Image: https://timelessmoon.getarchive.net/media/uss-abraham-lincoln-cvn-72-underway-in-the-arabian-sea-in-support-of-operation-de6548?action=download&size=1024]