Iran: No talks until US cuts all ties to Israel

Iran’s supreme leader demands the US end its support for Israel and withdraw all military forces from the Middle East as preconditions to negotiations.

By World Israel News Staff

Iran’s supreme leader issued a series of demands to the United States this week, conditioning future talks between the two countries on several major foreign policy shifts by the US.

Speaking to a group of Iranian students in Tehran on Monday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran would only consider engaging with the United States after Washington ends its support for the State of Israel, withdraws all American military forces from the Middle East, and evacuates its bases in the region.

“Only if the United States completely cuts its backing for the Zionist regime, removes its military bases from the region, and ceases interfering in its affairs, their request for cooperation with Iran — not in the near future but much later — may be examined,” Khamenei said.

Monday’s event marked the 46th anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. Americans taken captive at the embassy were held hostage for 444 days, cementing US opposition to the new Iranian regime.

But Khamenei said that the nearly half a century of tensions between Iran and the US were inevitable, and not merely a product of the 1979 hostage crisis.

“The differences between the Islamic Republic and America are not tactical but essential.”

“Some distort history and imagine that the slogan ‘Death to America’ caused this conflict – this is naïve.”

America, Khamenei continued, has long been “imperialist and intolerant of independence.”

“Every American president has demanded Iran’s surrender, even if they did not say it aloud. The current president said it openly — he revealed the true face of America. What does the surrender of a nation like Iran even mean?”