Several hours after US President Trump announced he would soon dispatch negotiators to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, Iranian state media reported on the 19th that Tehran currently has no plans to participate in a new round of talks with the US.
The current US-Iran ceasefire agreement is set to expire on the 22nd.
Trump posted on social media that the US delegation will arrive in Islamabad on the evening of the 20th. In an interview with The New York Times, he stated that if a US-Iran agreement is reached, he is “very likely” to go to Islamabad.
According to AFP, Iran's Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) quoted an Iranian source as saying: “There are currently no plans to participate in the next round of Iran-US talks.”
The semi-official Fars News Agency and Tasnim News Agency had earlier cited anonymous sources as saying that Tehran has not yet decided whether to attend the talks, stressing that “the overall atmosphere is far from positive.”
Fars News Agency quoted one source as saying that the lifting of the US blockade on Iranian ports is a prerequisite for negotiations.
Earlier, the official Islamic Republic News Agency of Iran reported that the US position is “radical, making unreasonable and unrealistic demands, frequently changing its stance, often being contradictory, and continuing with the so-called maritime blockade,” emphasizing that “under such circumstances, there are no clear signs that negotiations can bear fruitful results.”