Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday he was satisfied with talks with arch-foe the United States but warned they could ultimately prove fruitless.
Tehran and Washington are due to meet again in Muscat on Saturday, a week after top officials held the highest-level talks since the landmark 2015 nuclear accord collapsed.
Saturday’s talks were “well carried out in the first steps”, Khamenei said, quoted by state television. “Of course, we are very pessimistic about the other side, but we are optimistic about our capabilities.”
But he added that “the negotiations may or may not yield results”.
Iran insists discussions remain “indirect” and mediated by Oman.
Khamenei said Iran’s “red lines are clear”, without elaborating.
Earlier Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the country’s military capabilities were off limits in the discussions.
“National security and defence and military power are among the red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which cannot be discussed or negotiated under any circumstances,” Guards spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini said.
On Monday, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who led the talks in Oman with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said Iran should return to the 3.67 percent enrichment level stipulated in the 2015 accord.
He said the process with Iran “is going to be much about verification on the enrichment programme and then ultimately verification on weaponisation that includes missiles, the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there and it includes the trigger for a bomb”.
