No decision’ on attending next round of US talks, Iran says
“As of now, while I am at your service, we have no plans for the next round of negotiation, and no decision has been made in this regard,” said ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei in a weekly press briefing.
Mr Baqaei said that the United States was not serious about pursuing diplomacy, citing what it called “violations” of their two-week ceasefire.
“While claiming diplomacy and readiness for negotiations, the US is carrying out behaviours that do not in any way indicate seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic process,” he added.
He said a US attack on an Iranian cargo ship early Monday, the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, and delays in implementing a ceasefire in Lebanon were all “clear violations of the ceasefire”.
Earlier, Iranian state media said Iran was not currently planning on attending the talks in Islamabad after President Donald Trump ordered US negotiators to travel to Pakistan today, just days before the ceasefire in the Middle East expires.The ongoing US blockade of Iranian ports has been a significant sticking point, an issue further complicated by an American destroyer yesterday firing on and seizing an Iranian ship that tried to evade it.
Tehran said it would retaliate with Tasnim news agency reporting that Iran had sent drones in the direction of US military ships after its vessel was seized.
The Fars and Tasnim news agencies had earlier cited anonymous sources as saying “the overall atmosphere cannot be assessed as very positive”, adding that lifting the US blockade was a precondition for negotiations.
State-run IRNA meanwhile pointed to the blockade and Washington’s “unreasonable and unrealistic demands”, saying that “in these circumstances, there is no clear prospect of fruitful negotiations”.
Iran and the United States, along with Israel, are just days away from the end of the two-week ceasefire that halted the Middle East war, ignited by surprise US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February.
There has so far been only a single, 21-hour negotiating session held in Islamabad on 11 April that ended inconclusively, though groundwork for fresh talks continued afterwards.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it,” Mr Trump said in a post on Sunday, while also renewing his threats against Iran’s infrastructure if a deal is not made.
US fires on Iranian ship
Mr Trump has been under pressure to find an off-ramp since Tehran moved early in the war to choke off the Strait of Hormuz.
The vital waterway is a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas in peacetime, and its closure has hammered the global economy and roiled markets.
Having failed to force it open again, Mr Trump countered with a US naval blockade on Iranian ports in an attempt to cut off Tehran’s oil revenues.
Yesterday, he announced that a massive Iranian-flagged cargo ship “tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them.”
A US destroyer warned the ship to stop and then forced it to by “by blowing a hole in the engineroom”, Mr Trump said, adding: “Right now, US Marines have custody of the vessel.”
Mr Trump said the Iranian-flagged ship, Touska, is under US Treasury sanctions “because of prior history of illegal activity”.
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