\u2060Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said nuclear talks with the United States have produced \u201cencouraging signals\u201d, but warned that Tehran is prepared for any scenario in advance of another round of negotiations set for Thursday.<\/p>\n
His comments on Sunday came amid mounting fears of a military conflict, with Washington building up its military presence in the Gulf and US President Donald Trump warning of \u201creally bad things\u201d if no deal is reached on Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIran is committed to peace and stability in the region,\u201d Pezeshkian wrote on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecent negotiations involved the exchange of practical proposals and yielded encouraging signals. However, we continue to closely monitor US actions and have made all necessary preparations for any potential scenario,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The cautious optimism came after Oman\u2019s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi confirmed a third round of indirect talks between the two sides in Geneva, Switzerland.<\/p>\n
\u201cPleased to confirm US-Iran negotiations are now set for Geneva this Thursday, with a positive push to go the extra mile towards finalising the deal,\u201d said al-Busaidi, who acts as a mediator in indirect talks between Washington and Tehran.<\/p>\n
Iran and the US resumed talks on Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme in Oman earlier this month, and held a second round<\/a> in Geneva last week. Although Washington and Tehran described the talks in overall positive terms, they failed to achieve a breakthrough.<\/p>\n \u2018Why haven\u2019t they capitulated?\u2019<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who leads nuclear negotiations for Washington, said on Saturday that the US president was curious as to \u200cwhy Iran has not yet \u201ccapitulated\u201d and agreed to curb its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to use the word \u2018frustrated\u2019, because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he\u2019s curious as to\u2026 why they haven\u2019t capitulated,\u201d Witkoff said during an interview with My View with Lara Trump on Fox News, hosted by the US president\u2019s daughter-in-law.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy, under this pressure \u2013 with the amount of seapower and naval power over there \u2013 why haven\u2019t they come to us and said, \u2018We profess we don\u2019t want a weapon, so here\u2019s what we\u2019re prepared to do\u2019? And yet, it\u2019s sort of hard to get them to that place.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the US media, the airpower Washington is amassing in the region is the greatest since its invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the past few days alone, the US has deployed<\/a> more than 120 aircraft to the Middle East, while the world\u2019s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, is on its way to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group that is already positioned in the Arabian Sea.<\/p>\n Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi pushed back swiftly.<\/p>\n \u201cCurious to know why we do not capitulate?\u201d he said in a post on X. \u201cBecause we are Iranian.\u201d<\/p>\n In a separate television interview on CBS\u2019s Face the Nation, Araghchi described Iran\u2019s nuclear programme as a matter of national \u201cdignity and pride\u201d, noting that the country\u2019s scientists had developed the technology independently after enduring two decades of US sanctions<\/a>, the targeted killings<\/a> of Iranian researchers and joint US-Israeli strikes<\/a> on nuclear facilities last June.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have developed this technology by ourselves, by our scientists, and it is very dear to us because we have created it \u2013 we have paid a huge expense for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to give it up. There is no legal reason to do that while everything is peaceful and safeguarded\u201d by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Araghchi said.<\/p>\n