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Iran rebuffs Biden's offer of direct talks
Iran's highest official publicly rebuffed proposals for direct talks with the United States on Thursday, just days after Vice President Biden floated the idea.
“Some naive people like the idea of negotiating with America, however, negotiations will not solve the problem,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech carried on his web site, according to Reuters.
“American policy in the Middle East has been destroyed and Americans now need to play a new card. That card is dragging Iran into negotiations."
“We have made it clear at the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally with the Iranian leadership, we would not make it a secret that we were doing that, we would let our partners know if that occasion presented itself,” he said. “That offer stands, but it must be real and tangible and there has to be an agenda that they are prepared to speak to. We are not just prepared to do it for the exercise.”
Khamenei's comments come just as the administration put in place the latest round of congressional sanctions, which expands the scope of sanctionable transactions with the Central Bank of Iran and Iran's petroleum industry.
Iran agreed earlier this week to another round of talks on its alleged nuclear program with a group of six nations, including the United States, in Kazakhstan on Feb. 25.
