Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today ruled out direct talks with the United States amid simmering tensions over the weekend attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.
In a televised address, the country’s supreme leader appeared to quash hopes that US President Donald Trump could meet his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, at this week’s UN General Assembly.
“Iranian officials, at any level, will never talk to American officials. This is part of their policy to put pressure on Iran ... their policy of maximum pressure will fail,” Khamenei said.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have spiked following Saturday’s suspected drone and cruise missile attacks on the Abqaiq oil processing centre and Khurais oil field, which knocked out about five per cent of global supply.
It came days after Mr Trump and Mr Rouhani signalled they could sit down together at the General Assembly to try to hammer out their countries’ differences and cool fears of a wider Middle East war.
On Sunday, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said the attacks “did not help” prospects for a meeting, but left the door open for talks.
The Ayatollah’s remarks came hours after Mr Trump told reporters in the White House it was “looking like” Iran was behind the attacks, which sent oil prices soaring.
“It’s looking that way,” he said, adding: “That’s being checked out right now.”
However, the President toned down his rhetoric a day after tweeting that the United States was “locked and loaded” to respond to the attack on the world’s biggest crude-processing plant.
Mr Trump said there was “no rush” to take action, adding: “I’m somebody that would like not to have war. We have a lot of options but I’m not looking at options right now. We want to find definitively who did this.”
He said America was prepared for conflict if necessary, but added: “With all that being said, we’d certainly like to avoid it.
“I know they (Iran) want to make a deal. At some point it will work out.”
Mr Trump denied making any commitment to protecting the Saudis. “No, I haven’t promised Saudis that. We have to sit down with the Saudis and work something out,” he said.
“That was an attack on Saudi Arabia, and that wasn’t an attack on us. But we would certainly help them.”
Saudi Arabia has invited United Nations experts to investigate the attacks.
Mr Trump also downplayed yesterday’s oil price hike, which saw the price of Brent crude jump 14 per cent, claiming: “They haven’t risen very much, and we have the strategic oil reserves, which are massive.”
Relations between Washington and Tehran have steadily deteriorated since Mr Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.
