Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with teachers in Tehran, Iran. AP
In his first reaction to Trump’s regional visit, Khamenei said: “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.”
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 Saturday during a meeting with teachers broadcast on state television.
Khamenei also reiterated Iran's stance against Israel, saying: "Definitely, the Zionist regime is the spot of corruption, war, rifts. The Zionist regime that is lethal, dangerous, cancerous tumour should certainly be eradicated, and it will be".
Meanwhile, Iran’s president said his country will continue talks with the United States over its 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 if they threaten us we will give up our human right and definite rights,” Pezeshkian said. “We will not withdraw, we will not easily lose honorable achievements in military, scientific and nuclear” fields and other areas.
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.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached.
Earlier on Friday, Trump said Iran received a proposal during the talks, though he did not elaborate.
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% of all the agency inspections” in the year.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.
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