Iran has halted contacts with Steve Witkoff, the United States’ senior negotiator, for several months, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, while signaling that Tehran remains open to a negotiated agreement it describes as fair and balanced.
Araghchi said he had previously been in contact with Witkoff over Iran’s nuclear program but that Tehran decided months ago to suspend that channel.
“I had been in contact with Steve Witkoff, but not in recent days, because for several months we decided to stop these contacts,” Araghchi said in an interview with Russian media during a visit to Moscow.
He said Iran and the United States had held five rounds of talks and had scheduled a sixth for June 15, but that the process was disrupted days earlier by Israeli strikes on Iran, followed by US involvement.
“We had even set a sixth round for June 15, but two days before that the Israelis attacked us. This attack was unprovoked and illegal, and the United States then joined it,” he said.
Araghchi said Iran remained willing to reach an agreement through diplomacy but rejected what he described as imposed terms.
“We are ready for a fair and balanced agreement achieved through negotiations, but we are not ready to accept dictates,” he said.
He said Tehran was prepared to provide full assurances that its nuclear program is peaceful, as it did under the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
“We are ready to give full assurances that our program is peaceful and will remain peaceful forever. This is exactly what we did in 2015, and it worked,” Araghchi said.
Araghchi criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for failing to condemn attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities that he said were peaceful and operating under international safeguards.
“It is deeply regrettable that the agency and its director-general did not condemn the attack on a peaceful nuclear facility that was under IAEA safeguards,” he said.
He said Iran remained committed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and willing to cooperate with the IAEA, but questioned how inspections should be conducted at sites that had been attacked.
“We are a committed member of the NPT and ready to cooperate with the agency, but we have a simple question: how should a nuclear facility that has been attacked be inspected? There is no precedent for this,” he said.
Iran’s top diplomat repeated that Iran viewed uranium enrichment as both a legal right and a matter of national dignity.
“We have two experiences: one of diplomacy, which succeeded, and one of military action, which failed,” Araghchi said. “The choice now lies with the United States.”
“The simplest task is to build a nuclear bomb, because it does not need fuel control and explodes at once,” Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Saturday, calling it much simpler than developing a nuclear power plant.
“Building a nuclear power plant, which needs control of fuel and reaction levels, is difficult and technical.”
Kamalvandi said Iran has reached "the edge of power in the nuclear field, and there is no unknown issue left for us."
Before a 12-day war in June that culminated in US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities and paused any uranium enrichment in Iran, the country was enriching uranium to near weapons-grade purity levels.
While Tehran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, the United States and Western countries want Iran to end uranium enrichment, arguing that enrichment beyond 20% has no civilian purpose.
UN inspections
The UN nuclear watchdog has resumed inspection activities in Iran but remains unable to access several of the country’s most sensitive nuclear sites following June strikes, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said last week.
“We are only allowed to access sites that were not hit,” he said, calling the resumption important but insufficient.
Grossi said Iran cannot unilaterally decide whether inspectors may enter the damaged facilities.
“If they say it is unsafe and inspectors cannot go there, then inspectors must be allowed to confirm that this is indeed the case,” Grossi said in an interview with Russian state media. “That determination has to be made by the agency.”
Kamalvandi, however, says the UN nuclear watchdog's requests are unreasonable.
“The agency’s insistence that access and inspections take place strictly under a safeguards agreement written for non-war conditions is unreasonable,” he said.
Kamalvandi said Iran believes the current safeguards framework cannot be applied in the same way after military attacks.
“This framework was written for ordinary circumstances,” he said. “When nuclear facilities and materials are damaged in a military attack, the conditions are different.”
He said granting access to Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan while security threats persist could endanger Iran, and added that Tehran is considering other ways to account for nuclear material without inspectors entering the sites.
The standoff follows the June war that began with Israeli strikes on June 13 on nuclear facilities, senior military figures and nuclear scientists, followed by the US attacks on June 22.
Grossi said the three sites at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan bombed by the US are central to uranium processing, conversion and enrichment, but stressed that Iran’s nuclear program extends well beyond them.
“Iran has much more than these three facilities,” he said. “It has a very developed nuclear program, with research activities and many other sites.”
He cited Iran’s operating nuclear power plant at Bushehr and plans for additional reactors, including projects with Russia, adding: “Work continues in all these areas.”
The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.