Tehran [Iran], March 13: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would not negotiate with the US under threat, sending a message to US President Donald Trump to 'do whatever you want'.
"We cannot accept America's orders and threats. I will not even negotiate with them. Do whatever you want," Iranian state media quoted President Pezeshkian as saying on March 11.
Earlier, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on March 8 that Tehran would not be forced to sit at the negotiating table. The statement came a day after US President Trump said he had sent a letter calling on Iran to join negotiations on a new nuclear deal.
The US president at that time expressed openness to a deal with Tehran, while also restarting the "maximum pressure" campaign he applied during his first presidential term (2017-2021) to isolate Iran from the global economy and push its oil exports to zero.
In an interview with Fox Business last week, Mr. Trump said there were two ways to solve the Iran problem: militarily or sign a deal to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied it wants to develop nuclear weapons, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) has warned that the country is "significantly accelerating" its uranium enrichment to 60% purity, close to weapons-grade levels of about 90%.
Iran has accelerated its nuclear activities since 2019, a year after President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal signed between Iran and the P5+1 group (including the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) in 2015 and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the country's economy.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet behind closed doors on March 12 to discuss Iran's expansion of its near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile. Diplomats said they want the council to discuss Iran's obligation to provide the IAEA with the information needed to clarify the issue of undeclared nuclear material discovered at multiple sites in Iran, according to Reuters.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
