TEHRAN _ A top foreign policy adviser to Iran's supreme leader rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's offer to have talks as "irrelevant" and a propaganda stunt, the semi-official Iranian Students' News Agency reported.
"Trump has not only shown that he has no respect for the signature of the previous U.S. government but that he's willing to violate UN Security Council resolutions and other international agreements," Kamal Kharazi, the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations _ a state-funded policy center that advises Ayatollah Ali Khamenei _ was reported as saying.
Hours earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNBC TV the White House would be prepared to speak with Iran to try to sort out differences.
Antagonism between the U.S. and Iran _ already high over Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 multipower nuclear deal with Tehran and reimposition of sanctions _ heated up this month after the Trump administration didn't renew waivers that had let eight governments buy Iranian oil. The U.S. also deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, a Patriot missile defense battery, a warship and B-52 bombers to the Gulf in response to unspecified threats from Iran.
Iran responded to the U.S. moves by threatening last week to stop abiding by the nuclear deal's limitations on uranium enrichment if Europe doesn't remove obstacles to foreign investment into Iran and ease the flow of Iranian oil within 60 days. While Iran has always denied its nuclear program had a military component, its uranium enrichment activities had been controversial because Western powers said it could potentially be used in bombmaking, so the threat to abandon limits drew another round of U.S. sanctions, this time on Iranian metals.
Kharazi said Europe could show its willingness to keep the nuclear accord alive by making a trade channel for Iran operational. But the economic sanctions Trump imposed last year have made it tough, if not impossible, for European companies and banks to risk defying the U.S. and getting caught in its sanctions net.
