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(Bloomberg) -- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said negotiations with the US over his country’s nuclear program are unlikely to result in a deal and called the Trump administration’s latest demands on Iran “outrageous.”
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Speaking at an event to commemorate the death of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday, Khamenei said “there were indirect negotiations during his time as well. Needless to say, there was no result. We don’t think these negotiations will yield results now either. We don’t know what will happen.”
The comments are the latest sign that US President Donald Trump’s efforts to fast track deals to resolve some of the world’s most destabilizing crises and conflicts — from Russia’s war in Ukraine to Israel’s in the Gaza Strip — are floundering.
Benchmark Brent oil jumped then pared its gains following the comments, which were the most pessimistic by the Islamic Republic’s top decision maker since indirect talks started in April. Trump has threatened Iran with military action if it doesn’t make a deal with the US.
Khamenei’s statement was also a direct repudiation of Trump’s claim last week that Iran and the US were “getting close to maybe doing a deal” and that Iran “has sort of agreed to the terms.”
The two countries are trying to resolve years of animosity and strike a deal that will contain Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for relief from US sanctions that have severely hobbled the OPEC-member’s oil exports and broader economy.
Over the past week, Iran’s ability to enrich uranium has emerged as the major sticking point between the two sides, with the US insisting that Tehran abandons production altogether.
Under the terms of the defunct 2015 nuclear deal that Trump scuttled in his first term, Iran was able to enrich uranium but with stringent caps on its purity levels and quantities. Those limits have been significantly breached by Iran since 2019, about a year after Trump withdrew from the landmark accord and started imposing severe sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who’s leading the US side of the negotiations, said on Sunday that Iran cannot be allowed to enrich uranium at all because it means the country has the technical potential to weaponize its atomic activity in the future. Iran insists it has no intention of pursuing nuclear arms.
Last week a top adviser to Khamenei, Ali Shamkhani, told NBC news that Tehran is willing to limit enrichment as part of a deal. But officials have repeatedly said that retaining some capacity is non-negotiable in order to fuel its nuclear power plant.