Ahead of nuclear talks, US President Donald Trump says he is losing confidence about reaching a deal with Iran.
Washington and Tehran have held five rounds of talks since April as Trump seeks an agreement that would place constraints on Iran’s uranium enrichment. He has threatened to attack Iran if no deal can be agreed.
Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said on Wednesday that Iran would target US military bases in the region if the US attacked it first.
“Some officials on the other side threaten conflict if negotiations don’t come to fruition. If a conflict is imposed on us … all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries,” Nasirzadeh told reporters, the Reuters news agency reported.
Iraq, in the meantime, has not monitored any security concerns that call for evacuation of US personnel from the embassy in Baghdad, the Iraqi state news agency reported on Wednesday. US and Iraqi sources said earlier that Washington is preparing a partial evacuation of its Iraqi embassy and will allow military dependents to depart locations around the Middle East due to escalated security risks in the region.
Later in the day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated Tehran’s red lines: “We have announced and the supreme leader has a belief that we will not build nuclear weapons. Come and evaluate it however you want. We will not build a nuclear bomb.
“However, who gave you permission to say that we in this country do not have the right to conduct research on such and such topics? Who are they to tell us that we have no right to conduct research and must shut everything down? We are engaged in negotiations … We stand firm to ensure that no one imposes force upon us.”
The sixth round of talks is expected later this week, with Trump saying they will take place on Thursday, and Tehran saying they will be held on Sunday in Oman.
Trump ‘less confident’ of a deal
Trump said that he was growing less confident that a nuclear deal would be reached, in comments in a podcast released on Wednesday.
“I don’t know,” the US leader told the podcast Pod Force One on Monday, when asked whether he thought he could strike a deal with Iran.
“I’m less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago. Something happened to them, but I am much less confident of a deal being made,” he said.
Trump repeated the US position that Iran would be stopped from developing a nuclear bomb, regardless of whether a deal was reached.
“But it would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying, it’s so much nicer to do it,” he told the podcast.
“But I don’t think I see the same level of enthusiasm for them to make a deal.”
