Trump says US-Iran to hold nuclear talks next week; Tehran denies, says nothing planned

President Donald Trump said the US will hold talks with Iran next week on their nuclear ambitions. However, Tehran has denied making any plans to meet with the US. This comes amid the ceasefire between Iran and Israel that halted a 12-day war.

Trump said that they would likely seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions at the talks next week. "We're going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don't know. To me, I don't think it's that necessary…I'll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover," he said at The Hague during the NATO summit.

However, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview that there were no talks planned. He also said Tehran was assessing whether talks with the US were in its interest. 

The US and Iran were in the middle of talks, having held five rounds of negotiations, before the war between Israel and Iran broke out. The US, too, joined Israel, and attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities. Washington said the strikes were meant to curb Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons, but Iran said its nuclear programme is solely geared toward civilian use. 

Acknowledging the damages to the nuclear site, Araqchi said they were not little, and that relevant authorities were figuring out the new realities of Iran’s nuclear programme, which it said would also shape the country's future diplomatic stance. 

Trump had reiterated several times that US strikes ‘obliterated’ the nuclear facilities in Iran. However, a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated that the nuclear facilities were not obliterated but merely set back by a few months. This pushed Trump to lash out at certain US media houses and accuse them of demeaning the efforts of the pilots who raided the sites.

He later said, "The intelligence was very inconclusive…The intelligence says, 'We don't know, it could have been very severe.' That's what the intelligence says. So I guess that's correct, but I think we can take the 'we don't know.' It was very severe. It was obliteration.”