Iran says White House showing signs of ‘more flexible positions’

Secretary of State Pompeo says Washington is willing to negotiate without preconditions; Iran’s president says Tehran will talk if it’s done “respectfully.” 

By World Israel News Staff and AP

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the Trump administration is willing to talk with Iran “with no preconditions,” but he says the United States will continue its campaign of pressure against the Islamic Republic.

Pompeo is in Switzerland for talks with Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran.

America’s top diplomat says the U.S. is “prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions. We’re ready to sit down” with Iran’s leaders.

But Pompeo is also making clear that “the American effort to fundamentally reverse the malign activity of this Islamic Republic, this revolutionary force, is going to continue.”

IRNA, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic, said Sunday that “Washington’s growing and worrying tensions over Tehran have plummeted in recent days, as we witness more flexible positions by the White House officials: [A] decrease in the verbal abuses by [the] Trump team and the conditional acceptance of INSTEX are among these signs.”

INSTEX is an acronym for “The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges.” It is a “special-purpose vehicle” established in January by France, Germany, and the U.K. to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran on the heels of tougher U.S. sanctions against Tehran after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.

“Pompeo, in talks with his German counterpart, Haiku Moss, stressed that the U.S. did not have a problem with the launching of INSTEX, provided that exchanges with Tehran include humanitarian assistance and the traded goods are also licensed,” said IRNA.

In an article entitled “Signs of U.S. retreat from pugnacity with Iran,” IRNA writes that “in spite of the continuing hostility towards Iran, over the past few days the U.S. government has reduced the number of threatening measures and violent rhetoric.”

“We are for logic and talks if [the U.S.] sits respectfully at the negotiating table and follows international regulations, not if it issues an order to negotiate,” said Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday, as reported by the Reuters news agency. In April, Rouhani had demanded the lifting of sanctions and an apology as a precondition for talks.