CNN
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said calls for negotiations by “bully states” are aimed at dominating others, not resolving issues, after US President Donald Trump urged him to reach a nuclear deal.
Trump told Fox News this week that he had written a letter to Khamenei, adding “there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal. I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran.”
“I said, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate, because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran,’ and I think they want to get that letter – the alternative is we have to do something, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump added.
It remains unclear if Khamenei received the letter, but his comments, without directly referencing Trump, amount to a pointed rejection of the pressure.
“The insistence on the part of some bully states on negotiations is not to resolve issues, but to dominate and impose their own expectations,” Khamenei said on Saturday, as cited by Iranian state media outlets.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not accept their demands,” Khamenei added during a meeting with heads of the three branches of government in Tehran.
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and ordered a US-led strike on Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, drawing the ire of Tehran.
Since his return to power, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, an effort to isolate the country economically and diplomatically.
The president has previously said he wants to enter talks for a new deal with Iran, but the message from Iran has been mixed, with Khamenei saying last month that talks with the United States were “not smart.”
Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is peaceful.
Earlier this week, during a meeting with US officials in Saudi Arabia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia has offered to participate in nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
