Iran denied holding talks with the U.S. hours after President Trump said that both countries had “major points of agreement,” suggesting a possible end to the ongoing military operation.
“Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected the US President’s claims that talks are ongoing with Iran,” the regime-run Mehr news agency reported.
“We have [a] major point of agreement; I would say almost all points of agreement,” President Trump told reporters on Monday morning.
Trump’s full comments:
We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have points, major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces. They were unable to talk to each other, but we’ve had very strong talks. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner had them. They went, I would say, perfectly. I would say that if they carry through with that, it will end that problem, that conflict, and I think it will end it very, very substantially.We have very much in mind our partners in the Middle East. We’ve had great relationships with a lot of them. As you know, a lot of them were surprisingly hit, and I was surprised to see it, and so was everyone else. But we have, they’re very much in mind in the discussions.So the discussions took place yesterday. They went into yesterday evening. They want very much to make a deal. We’d like to make a deal too. We’re going to get together today by probably phone, because it’s very hard to find a country. It’s very hard for them to get out, I guess. But we’ll at some point very, very soon, meet. We’re doing a five day period. We’ll see how that goes, and if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this. Otherwise we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
The Iranian regime promptly rejected the peace overture, with its Foreign Ministry claiming there had been no talks with Washington on the matter.
The BBC reports:
Iran’s foreign ministry has issued a statement, saying: “We deny what US President Donald Trump said regarding negotiations taking place between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”Quoted by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, the foreign ministry adds: “The Islamic Republic of Iran adheres to its position rejecting any type of negotiations before achieving Iran’s goals from the war.”
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is now among the top regime officials following recent eliminations, called for “complete and remorseful punishment” of the U.S. and Israel. Dubbing the prospect of an agreement “fake news,” he wrote in X that “No negotiations have been held with the US.”
Though Tehran denies holding talks, media reports suggest that the regime is conducting extensive back-channel diplomacy with the United States. While “Iran promptly denied ever having directly with him or through intermediaries,” the British newspaper Guardian observed that it “does not mean the diplomatic track was entirely silent.”
“Turkey, through its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and Oman, via its foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who are respected in both Tehran and Washington, have been working the phones constantly,” the newspaper added.
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