Iran’s supreme leader on Tuesday ruled out direct talks with the United States over the nuclear program, likely ending a final bid to prevent the reimposition of U.N. sanctions on Tehran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's remarks, aired on Iranian state television, likely constrain any possible outreach to the U.S. by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly. Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held meetings with diplomats from France, Germany and the United Kingdom over the reimposition of the sanctions, set to take effect Sunday.
Talks with the U.S. represent "a sheer dead end,” Khamenei said.
"The U.S. has announced result of the talks in advance," he added. "The result is the closure of nuclear activities and enrichment, This is not a negotiation. It is a diktat, an imposition.”
Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul already described the chance of reaching an agreement with Iran "extremely slim” even before Khamenei's comments, the German news agency dpa reported.
"Iran has been disregarding its obligations under the Vienna Nuclear Agreement for years,” Wadephul was reported as saying, referring to the nuclear deal that was concluded between Iran and world powers in Vienna in 2015 and aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
"We have drawn the necessary consequences from this and triggered the so-called snapback mechanism, which will reinstate international sanctions against Iran at the end of this week,” he said.
Wadephul added, however, that the three European countries - known as the E3 - will continue to negotiate with Iran even after the sanctions are back.
Amid a flurry of diplomatic engagements, Araghchi on Monday also met with Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in New York.
Earlier this month, the U.N. nuclear watchdog and Iran signed an agreement mediated by Egypt to pave the way for resuming cooperation, including on ways of relaunching inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, that agreement has yet to fully take hold.
In July, Pezeshkian signed a law adopted by his country’s parliament suspending all cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog. That followed Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June, during which Israel and the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites.
France, Germany and the U.K. began the process of reimposing sanctions on Iran at the end of August.
The process – termed a "snapback” by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers – was designed to be veto-proof at the U.N. It started a 30-day clock ticking for the resumption of sanctions unless the West and Iran reach a diplomatic agreement.
European nations have said they would be willing to extend the deadline if Iran resumes direct negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program, allows U.N. nuclear inspectors access to its nuclear sites, and accounts for the more than 400 kilograms (881 pounds) of highly enriched uranium the U.N. watchdog says it has.
If no diplomatic deal is found this week, the sanctions will automatically "snapback” on Sunday. That would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s reeling economy.
Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, though Western nations and the IAEA assess that Tehran had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003. Khamenei again pledged that Iran does not seek atomic bombs.
"We do not have a nuclear bomb and we will not have one, and we do not plan to use nuclear weapon,” he said.
However, he stressed that Israeli and American attacks would not destroy the nuclear knowledge gained by Iran over the decades over the crisis surrounding the program.
"Science will not be demolished by threats and bombing," he vowed.
