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.”
