Iran’s president said Tuesday that he has instructed the country’s foreign minister to “conduct fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first clear sign that Tehran wants to try to negotiate while tensions remain high with Washington.
It comes after last month’s bloody crackdown in the Middle Eastern country against nationwide protests.
The announcement marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had widely warned Iranians for weeks that the unrest in their country had escaped his control.
It also indicates that the president received support from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for talks that the 86-year-old cleric had previously ruled out.
But potential talks were thrown into question when U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that a U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone approaching a U.S. aircraft carrier.
In an emailed statement, U.S. Central Command said the drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalation measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters.”
Turkey had been working behind the scenes to get talks there later this week as US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region. A Turkish official later said the location of the talks was uncertain but that Türkiye was willing to support the process. The official did not provide further details.
The foreign ministers of Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they take place, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to journalists.
But it remains to be seen whether Iran and the United States can reach a deal, particularly now that US President Donald Trump has included Iran’s nuclear program on a list of Tehran’s demands in any talks.
Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day war that Israel launched against Iran in June.
Iran’s president says talks are possible
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“I have instructed my Foreign Minister, provided there is an appropriate environment, free from threats and unreasonable expectations, to conduct fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence and convenience,” he said.
The United States has not yet acknowledged that talks will take place. A semiofficial Iranian news agency reported Monday (later deleted without explanation) that Pezeshkian had issued such an order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who held multiple rounds of talks with Witkoff before the 12-day war.
On Tuesday, Araghchi spoke by phone with his counterparts in Oman, Qatar, Türkiye and Kuwait, but did not mention anything about a possible venue.
Khamenei’s advisor speaks on nuclear issue
On Monday night, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, broadcast an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Khamenei on security matters.
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Shamkhani, who now serves on the country’s Supreme National Security Council and who in the 1980s led Iran’s navy, was wearing a naval uniform as he spoke.
He suggested that if talks took place they would be indirect at first and then move to direct talks if a deal seemed possible. Direct talks with the United States have long been a highly charged political issue within the Iranian theocracy, with reformers like Pezeshkian pushing them and hardliners ruling them out.
The talks will focus solely on nuclear issues, he added.
Asked whether Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium as it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea and said there was “no reason” to do so. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia had “long offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate certain irritants for several countries.”
“Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never amass nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price for this,” he said.
Iran had been enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, a short and technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said that Iran was the only country in the world that would enrich at that level and that it was not armed with the bomb.
Iran has been rejecting IAEA requests to inspect sites bombed in the June war.
“The amount of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the reserves are under the rubble and there is still no initiative to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous,” Shamkhani said.
Witkoff travels to Israel
Witkoff is expected to meet Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.
While in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of Mossad’s intelligence service and the chief of staff of the Israeli army, according to another official who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israel is expected to ask that any deal with Iran include eliminating the country’s enriched uranium, stopping uranium enrichment, limiting the creation of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran’s proxies.
However, Shakhani in his interview refused to give up uranium enrichment, a major obstacle in previous talks with the United States. In November, Araghchi said Iran was not enriching uranium domestically because of the US bombing of nuclear sites.
Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, later this week for talks between Russia and Ukraine, the official said.
“We have talks with Iran, we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. When asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.
“I would like to see a negotiated agreement,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could get a deal, that would be great. And if we can’t, bad things would probably happen.”
Mike Pompeo, an Iran hardliner who served as CIA director and secretary of state during Trump’s first term, said it was “unimaginable that there could be a deal.”
“I think it is possible that they will reach some agreement,” Pompeo said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “But to think that there is a long-term solution that will truly provide stability and peace to this region while the Ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable.”
Also on Tuesday, a ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, reported being hailed by radio “by numerous small armed vessels,” the British military’s Maritime Trade Operations center in the United Kingdom said.
There was no identifying information on the ship, which continued toward the Persian Gulf. The location of the incident appeared to take place in Iranian territorial waters, where officials had warned of a naval exercise conducted by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days.
