Responding to Trump letter, Iran says open to mediation

Iran officially responded to a letter from US President Donald Trump to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday seeking a nuclear deal, saying his stepped-up sanctions made direct talks impossible but expressing openness to third-party mediation.

Tehran conveyed the response via Oman on Wednesday, Iran’s official IRNA news website quoted Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying.

"Our policy remains not to engage in direct negotiations under maximum pressure and military threats. However, indirect negotiations as existed in the past can continue," Araghchi said.

"Indirect negotiations had taken place both under the administration of Mr. Rouhani and Martyr Raisi," he said referring to Iran's previous two presidents.

The remarks largely repeat his previous public statements on engagement with Washington.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon but the UN's nuclear watchdog says it has enriched more uranium than any state lacking a bomb. While Washington assesses Tehran is not actively building one, it doubts Iranian intentions.

Trump last month reinstated the "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions on Iran from his first term, with the stated aim of driving its oil sales to zero.

Signing the initiative, Trump said: "It's very simple. I'm not putting restrictions. They cannot have one thing. They cannot have a nuclear weapon."

A senior Emirati official personally conveyed the letter to Tehran urging a nuclear deal which Khamenei - without specifically referencing the missive - rejected, calling the overture a deception while Washington's sanction policy hurts Iran.

Trump withdrew from a 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran in his first term after bashing it as too lenient. Khamenei said talks were pointless if a new deal could easily be broken.

The previous deal, inked under President Barack Obama, was mediated in part by Oman.

Trump's letter gave Iran a two-month deadline for reaching a new nuclear deal, Axios has reported citing one US official and two sources briefed on the letter.

"You've got a lot of stuff going on with Iran, and we sent a letter to Iran," Trump said this week. "You're going to have to be speaking to us one way or the other pretty soon, because we can't let this happen."

Trump has demanded Tehran come to a deal or face a military intervention and warned any attack by Yemen's Houthis would be treated as emanating from Iran.