Iran on Friday has again refused to enter peace negotiations that would affect the future of its nuclear programme while it continues to be attacked incessantly by Israel.
This comes amid attempts by European foreign ministers to get Tehran back on the negotiationg table within US President Donald Trump's two-week window for final talks, before Washington joins Israel in bombing Iran—a move that would escalate the 8-day conflict to another level.
The diplomats from E3 nations (Britain, France and Germany), accompanied by the European Union's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, were to directly inform Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi that even the US was open to join the peace talks.
Although US President Donald Trump has not yet formally confirmed this, diplomats have stated that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to several Western counterparts beforehand, indicating readiness to engage directly with Tehran, a Reuters report said.
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While Tehran has so far been open to discuss certain curbs on its uranium enrichment programme, any proposal to stop the nuclear programme completely will be rejected, "especially now under Israel's strikes", a senior Iranian official had told Reuters.
As the Israel-Iran hostilities rage on for the eighth day, Tehran continues to retaliate from time to time. In the early hours of Friday, it launched a new barrage of missiles, striking areas near residential apartments, office buildings and industrial facilities in the southern city of Beersheba.
Israel has so far eliminated more than 20 of Iran's top brass—prompting rapid reorganisation and speculations of assassination attempts on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's life—and a number of nuclear scientists, in military operations it has called 'Rising Lion' and 'Narnia'.
639 people—a figure including military officials and nuclear scientists—in Iran have died due to Israeli air offensives, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights organisation. 24 civilians in Israel have been killed in Iran's retaliatory missile attacks, according to Iranian authorities.
