US Defense Secretary Mark Esper says that it appeared Iran was inching toward a place where talks could be held, days after US President Donald Trump left the door open to a possible meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York.
“It seems in some ways that Iran is inching toward that place where we could have talks and hopefully it’ll play out that way,” Esper said at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.
Friction between the two countries has grown since Trump last year withdrew from a 2015 international accord under which Iran had agreed to rein in its atomic program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Washington has since renewed and intensified its sanctions, slashing Iran’s crude oil sales by more than 80 per cent.
At the same time the United States has rebuffed, but not ruled out, a French plan to give Tehran a $US15 billion ($A22 billion) credit line.
Rouhani, for his part, on Wednesday gave European powers two more months to try to save the multilateral pact.
The moves suggested Iran, the United States and European powers may be leaving the door open for diplomacy to resolve a dispute over Iran’s nuclear work, which the West has suspected was aimed at developing a nuclear weapon, even as they largely stuck to entrenched positions.
Iran denies ever having sought a nuclear bomb.
Read the article by Idrees Ali in The West Australian.