Iran says it will continue nuclear talks with the U.S., shrugging off Trump’s threats

In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks to navy officials, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president said his country will continue talks with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program but will not withdraw from its rights because of U.S. threats.

“We are negotiating, and we will negotiate , we are not after war but we do not fear any threat,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said during a speech to navy officials broadcast by state television Saturday.

“It is not like that they think if they threaten us , we will give up our human right and definite right,” Pezeshkian said. “We will not withdraw, we will not easily loose honorable military, scientific, nuclear in all fields.”

The negotiations have reached the “expert” level, meaning the sides are trying to reach agreement on the details of a possible deal. But a major sticking point remains Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which Tehran insists it must be allowed to do and the Trump administration increasingly insists the Islamic Republic must give up.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Earlier on Friday, Trump said Iran received a proposal during the talks, though he did not elaborate.

During his trip to region this week, Trump at nearly every event insisted Iran could not be allowed to obtain a nuclear bomb, something U.S. intelligence agencies assess Tehran is not actively pursuing, though its program is on the cusp of being able to weaponize nuclear material.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s atomic organization, stressed the peaceful nature of the program, saying it is under “continuous” monitoring by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, state TV reported Saturday.

“No country is monitored by the agency like us,” Eslami said, adding that the agency inspected the country’s nuclear facilities more than 450 time in 2024. “Something about 25 per cent of all the agency inspections” in the year.

Meanwhile, Israel routinely has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if it feels threatened, further complicating tensions in the Mideast already spiked by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

In his first reaction to Trump’s regional visit, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Trump wasn’t truthful when he made claims about creating peace through power.

“Trump said that he wanted to use power for peace, he lied. He and the U.S. administration used power for massacre in Gaza, for waging wars in any place they could,” Khamenei said Saturday during a meeting with teachers broadcast on state television.

The U.S. has provided Israel with 10-ton bombs to “drop on Gaza children, hospitals, houses of people in Lebanon and anywhere else when they can,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei, who has the final say on all Iranian state matters, reiterated his traditional stance against Israel.

“Definitely, the Zionist regime is the spot of corruption, war, rifts. The Zionist regime that is lethal, dangerous, cancerous tumor should be certainly eradicated, and it will be,” he said, adding that the U.S. has imposed a pattern on Arab nations under which they cannot endeavor without U.S. support.

“Surely this model has failed. With efforts of the regional nations, the U.S. should leave the region, and it will leave,” Khamenei said.

Iran has long considered the U.S. military presence in the region as a threat on its doorstep, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.