Iran’s president seeks ‘fair and equitable negotiations’ with the US

Talks expected to begin in Turkey on Friday, although top Khamenei adviser says they will likely be indirect at first; UAE official says Tehran must ‘rebuild’ relationship with US

Iran’s president said Tuesday that he had instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first explicit confirmation from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Islamic Republic’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.

The announcement marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who broadly had warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in his country had gone beyond his control. It also signals that the president received support from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric had previously dismissed.

Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling in the region.

The priority of these talks will be to avoid any conflict and de-escalate tensions between the two sides, a regional official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the countries invited to the talks at the foreign ministers’ level included Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

The person said the format of the meetings remained unclear, but that the “main meeting” would be on Friday and that it was important to start dialogue between the parties to avoid further escalation.

On Tuesday, a senior United Arab Emirates official, presidential adviser Anwar Gargash, stressed that Iran needs to reach a nuclear deal with Washington in order to “rebuild their relationship with the United States.”

“I think that the region has gone through various calamitous confrontations,” he said during the World Governments Summit in Dubai. “I don’t think we need another one, but I would like to see direct Iranian-American negotiations leading to understandings that we don’t have these issues every other day.”

But whether Iran and the US can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as US President Donald Trump now has included Iran’s nuclear program in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks.

Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June.

Iran’s president signals talks are possible

Writing on X, Pezeshkian said in English and Persian that the decision to embark on talks came after “requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the proposal by the President of the United States for negotiations.”

“I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists — one free from threats and unreasonable expectations — to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency,” he said.

The US has yet to acknowledge the talks will take place. A semiofficial news agency in Iran on Monday reported — then 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.

Khamenei adviser speaks on the nuclear issue

Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a top Khamenei adviser on security.

Shamkhani, who now sits on the country’s Supreme National Security Council and who in the 1980s led Iran’s navy, wore a naval uniform as he spoke.

He suggested that if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, before moving to direct talks if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the US long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran’s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hardliners dismissing them.

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added. Iran’s officials have indicated that their country’s ballistic missiles were nonnegotiable.

Asked about whether Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium like it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea, saying there was “no reason” to do so. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Russia had “long offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate certain irritants for a number of countries.”

“Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never stockpile nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price in return for this,” he said.

Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it has enriched uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels and which has no peaceful application.

The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn’t armed with the bomb. Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed by Israel and the US in June 2025.

“The quantity of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the stockpile is under rubble, and there is no initiative yet to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous,” Shamkhani said.

Witkoff traveling to Israel

Witkoff is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday. Mossad chief David Barnea will join Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir at the meeting with Witkoff, according to Channel 12.

Israel is expected to call for the US to uphold three “no”s during the talks with Iran. These demands are that under any deal with the US, Iran agree to have no nuclear program, no ballistic missile program, and to give no support to armed proxy groups, including terror groups threatening Israel.

However, Shakhani in his interview rejected giving up uranium enrichment — a major obstacle in earlier talks with the US. In November, Araghchi said Iran was doing no enrichment in the country because of the US bombing of the nuclear sites.

Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, according to a White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We have talks going on with Iran, we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.

“I’d like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that’d be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”

The US president has repeatedly said that a large fleet of US military vessels is sailing toward Iran, even as he pushes for diplomatic progress.

Mike Pompeo, a hardliner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump’s first term, said it was “unimaginable that there can be a deal.”

“I think they may come away with some set of understandings,” Pompeo said at Dubai’s World Governments Summit. “But to think that there’s a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable.”

Lazar Berman and Jacob Magid contributed to this report.