US President Donald Trump said his confidence in securing a nuclear deal with Iran has waned, but he vowed Tehran would never acquire nuclear weapons.
Tehran and Washington have held five rounds of talks since April to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, but uranium enrichment remains a major sticking point.
Trump has not ruled out military action against Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy fails, and US intelligence suggests Israel has been preparing to strike Iran if negotiations collapse.
Speaking in a New York Post podcast released on June 11, Trump said he does "not know" whether he could get Tehran to cease its nuclear activities.
"I don't know. I did think so, and I'm getting more and more -- less confident about it," the US president said.
Trump added that the Iranians "seem to be delaying," which made him "less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago."
“Something happened to them. But I'm much less confident about a deal being made," he said.
In a post on X, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi acknowledged Trump's demand for no nuclear weapons.
"That is actually in line with our own doctrine and could become the main foundation for a deal," Araqchi said, but he reiterated a "mutually beneficial outcome" was dependent on "the continuation of Iran's enrichment program" under UN supervision and the "effective termination" of sanctions.
In comments on June 11, before Trump's interview was released, Iran's Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh warned that military action against the Islamic republic would prompt a response that he vowed would "result in the Americans leaving the region."
Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting, Nasirzadeh said, "All of its bases are within our reach; we have access to them, and we will target all of them in the host countries with no hesitation."
Araqchi said the next round of talks with the United States will be held on June 15 in Oman, which has been mediating the talks for two months.
Iran has been working on a counteroffer after rejecting a US proposal for a deal that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described as "100 percent" against national interests.
Meanwhile, the US and its European partners -- Britain, France, and Germany – have tabled a resolution at the ongoing quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors which, if adopted, will find Iran in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations for the first time in 20 years.
The resolution would facilitate the referral of Iran's case to the UN security council and the return of sanctions that had been suspended as part of a 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump abrogated in his first in office.
Iran has warned of repercussion of the resolution is adopted, suggesting it will accelerate and expand its nuclear program. The IAEA meeting concludes on June 13.
