Iran does not believe it can trust the US in diplomatic talks regarding a ceasefire or nuclear deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News on Friday.
Araghchi alluded that the sixth round of US-brokered nuclear talks was a cover for Israel’s attack on the Islamic Republic.
“So they had perhaps this plan in their mind, and they just needed negotiations perhaps to cover it up,” Araghchi said. “We don’t know how we can trust them anymore. What they did was, in fact, a betrayal of diplomacy.
He added that his country was unwilling to negotiate with the US during the current war.
“We’re not prepared to negotiate with them anymore, as long as the aggression continues,” he said.
Araghchi says Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium
He also told NBC that his country would continue to enrich uranium, and that he’d made this clear to Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff.
“I told him several times zero enrichment is impossible,” he told NBC. “This is an achievement of our own scientists. It’s a question of national pride and dignity.”
He noted that he thought Witkoff was "a gentleman, somebody you can work with," but that he does not trust him moving forward.
“There is a lack of confidence now between us because he didn’t deliver his promises and what he told us that we can do," he said.
Araghchi said that he believed that Israeli strikes would not destroy the “knowledge” Iran developed from its nuclear program.
“Suppose they destroy one facility or two,” he said. “We can rebuild them, because the knowledge is here, the technology is there. We have achieved that ourselves, and the technology cannot be reversed, cannot be destroyed by bombs.”
US President Donald Trump said this past week that the US knows the whereabouts of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is hiding, but that the US would not "take him out" in the near future.
"We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Araghchi said that he did not see this as a threat, but rather a big diplomatic blunder.
“I see it more as an insult. And I’m amazed how the president of the so-called superpower can talk like this. We have always talked about President Trump respectfully," he said, adding that it was "certainly not acceptable the way that he talked about our respected leader.”
Israeli leaders have also suggested that killing Khamenei could change the course of the war. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that it would end the war.
“It’s not going to escalate the conflict. It’s going to end the conflict.”
However, Araghchi said that this “would be the biggest crime they [Israel] can commit,” but that Jerusalem "won’t be able to do that.”
Both US and Israeli officials have noted that the war could lead to the fall of the Islamic Republic, but Araghchi told NBC that the regime would endure past the war.
"We have lived ... for thousands of years in that place. We have never been a colony of any other power. We have been always independent,” he said. “We are the cradle of civilization, the Persian civilization. So all those things cannot be bombed away.”