Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s president said Tuesday he has instructed the country’s foreign minister to “carry out fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first clear signal from Tehran that it wants to try to negotiate as the Middle East country remains at odds with Washington. Bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.

This announcement was a major achievement The turn of reformist President Massoud Pezeshkian Who had largely warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in their country was out of their control. It also indicates that the President received support from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86 years old, and Maulvi, who was dismissed earlier.

While US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region this weekend, Türkiye was quietly preparing to hold talks there. The foreign ministers of Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks if they happen, a regional official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to journalists.

But it remains to be seen whether Iran and the US can reach an agreement, especially as President Donald Trump has now included Iran’s nuclear programme in his list of demands from Tehran in any talks. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites. Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June.

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He said, “I have instructed my Foreign Minister, provided an appropriate environment exists – free from threats and unreasonable expectations – to pursue fair and equitable negotiations guided by the principles of dignity, prudence and expediency.”

America has not yet accepted that talks will take place. A semi-official news agency in Iran reported on Monday – which was later removed without explanation – that Pezeshkian had issued such an order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who held several rounds of talks with Witkoff Before the 12-day war.

Late Monday night, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically affiliated with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, broadcast 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 led Iran’s navy in the 1980s, wore a navy uniform as he spoke.

He suggested that if talks do take place, they would be indirect initially, then move to direct talks if an agreement is possible. Direct talks with the US have long been a highly important political issue within Iran’s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for it and hard-liners rejecting it.

He said that the talks would focus entirely on nuclear issues.

Asked whether Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium as it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani rejected the idea and said there was “no reason” to do so. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia had “long offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate some of the troubles for several countries.”

“Iran does not want nuclear weapons,

will not seek nuclear weapons and will never accumulate nuclear weapons, but the other side will have to pay a price in return,” he said.

Iran was enriching uranium to 60% purity, a small, technological step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said that Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that was not armed with a bomb.

Iran is rejecting an IAEA request to inspect sites bombed in the June war.

“The amount of enriched uranium remains unknown, as part of the stockpile is under debris, and there have been no initiatives yet to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous,” Shamkhani said.

Witkoff is expected to meet the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorised to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to another official, who was not authorised to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity, while in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of the Mossad intelligence service and the chief of staff of the Israeli army.

Israel is expected to ask that any deal with Iran include removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping uranium enrichment, limiting the production of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran’s proxies.

However, Shakhani refused in his interview to give up uranium enrichment – ​​a major hurdle in earlier talks with the US in November, Araghchi said. Iran was not doing any enrichment in the country due to American bombing of nuclear sites.

The official said Witkoff will travel to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi for Russia-Ukraine talks later in the week.

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

“I want to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them; we’re talking to Iran, and if we can get something done, that would be great. And if we can’t, maybe bad things will happen.”

“It was unimaginable that there could be a deal,” said Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump’s first term.

“I think they can come to some understanding,” Pompeo said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “But to think that there is a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to the region while the Ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but it seems unimaginable.”

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said Tuesday that a ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, received a radio report of being “greeted by several small armed vessels.”

The ship continued into the Persian Gulf. The location of the incident appears to be Iranian territorial waters, where authorities have warned of naval exercises by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days.

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Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem, Suzanne Fraser in Ankara, Türkiye, and Amer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.