Iran is ready for talks with the US, but there are no plans yet, foreign minister says

ISTANBUL (AP) — Iran is ready for dialogue to resolve tensions with the United States but that there are no concrete plans for talks with Washington, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday, even as Tehran faces the threat of U.S. military action in response to the killing of peaceful demonstrators and over possible mass executions.

Araghchi told reporters during a joint news conference in Istanbul with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that Iran has no plans to “meet with the Americans.”

“We are ready for fair and equitable negotiations,” Araghchi said. “For such negotiations, arrangements must first be made, both regarding the form of the talks and the location of the talks, and about the topic of the talks.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, just as it is ready for negotiations, it is also ready for war,” he added.

Iran launched a crack down on nationwide protests which initially began as demonstrations against the country’s economic woes but broadened into a challenge to the Islamic Republic’s theocracy. Activists say at least 6,479 people were killed.

The U.S. military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Middle East but it remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force. U.S. Central Command said Friday that the USS Lincoln had reached the Arabian Sea.

Turkey opposes a military intervention against Iran, warning such an action would lead to regional instability.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered on Friday to act as a “facilitator” between Iran and the U.S. during a telephone call with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, according to Erdogan’s office.

Araghchi held talks with Turkish officials who have been working to reduce tensions in the wider region following threats of a possible U.S. military strike against Iran.

“We are against resorting to military options to solve problems, and we do not believe that this will be very effective,” Fidan said. “We advocate for negotiation and diplomacy.”

Araghchi’s visit to Turkey came a day after the European United agreed to list Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist organization” over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on protesters.

In retaliation, Iran is considering designating the militaries of EU countries as “terrorist entities,” Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Friday. Iran’s parliament is expected to pass the law on Sunday, he wrote on X. The European Union did not immediately comment.

Araghchi on Wednesday posted on X that Iran’s military is prepared “with their fingers on the trigger” to respond to any attack, whether by land, air and sea. In a later post, he indirectly criticized the EU’s move against the Guard, saying that “several countries are presently attempting to avert the eruption of all-out war in our region. None of them are European.”

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Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.