Financial Times:

Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Bita Ghaffari in Tehran 

Iran has kept the door open to negotiations with the incoming Donald Trump administration, while warning the US president-elect that any attempt to reimpose “maximum pressure” on the Islamic republic would fail to extract concessions.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, told the Financial Times that coercion and intimidation would prove ineffective in the long-running stand-off between Iran and the west over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“As for negotiations, we need to observe US policy and decide how to respond accordingly,” Takht-Ravanchi said in his office at the foreign ministry in Tehran. “Right now, the key question is how the new administration will approach Iran, the nuclear issue, regional security and the Middle East. It’s premature to speculate about specific outcomes.”

Takht-Ravanchi said the nuclear deal reached with the west in 2015, from which Trump later withdrew the US, “could still serve as a foundation and be updated to reflect new realities”, adding that “if the other parties return to their commitments, we have repeatedly said that we are willing to do the same”.

He added: “We do favour negotiations, as we proved [with that deal] . . . But who sabotaged the negotiations previously? It was the Trump administration who was unwilling to negotiate.”

At the same time, the veteran diplomat and former nuclear negotiator warned that if Trump again takes a tough approach, “maximum pressure will be met with maximum resistance”.

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