**ISTANBUL**
Signaling it might reject new talks with its longtime rival the US, Iran’s supreme leader said Saturday that calls for negotiations by “coercive” governments are not aimed at resolving issues but just another tool for dominance.
“Some coercive governments insist on negotiations. Such negotiations aren’t aimed at solving issues. Their aim is to exert their dominance and impose what they want,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on X.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly not accept their expectations,” Khamenei said during a meeting with senior government and military officials in Tehran, according to the state-run news agency IRNA.
“For coercive governments, negotiations are a means to impose new demands. Iran will definitely not fulfill these new demands,” he added.
“They make new demands regarding the country's defense capabilities & int’l. capabilities, telling us not to do this, not to meet that person, not to go there, not to produce this, and to limit the range of our missiles to a certain extent. How could anyone accept such things?” he also said on X.
Iran sometimes balked at the requirements of its scuttled nuclear deal with Western countries.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump said that "interesting days" lie ahead for the US and Iran as he seeks to either negotiate a new nuclear deal with Tehran or pursue "the other option," a likely allusion to military action. Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
According to the agency, Khamenei also “criticized the European parties to the nuclear deal for accusing Iran of not living up to its commitments under the agreement.”
“You say Iran has not fulfilled its nuclear commitments. Well, did you fulfill yours?” he said.
Senior Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, have said they will not negotiate with the US under pressure and threats.
“As long as the US policy of maximum pressure and threats continues, we will not enter into direct negotiations with the US,” Aragchi said in a Friday interview in Saudi Arabia.
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