Iran’s president seeks 'fair and equitable' negotiations, while US shoots down drone

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's president said Tuesday he instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Mideast country's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.

The announcement came as a U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that approached an American aircraft carrier early Tuesday morning. Iranian fast boats from its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also tried to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, the Navy said. Iran did not immediately acknowledge either incident.

The incidents strained but apparently did not totally derail hopes for talks between Iran and the U.S. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff has been planning to hold talks with Iranian officials in Turkey later this week.

President Donald Trump "is always wanting to pursue diplomacy first, but obviously it takes two to tango,” Leavitt said. "You need a willing partner to achieve diplomacy and that’s something that special envoy Witkoff is intent on exploring and discussing.”

The shift toward negotiations marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had broadly warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in his country had gone beyond his control. It also signals that the president received support from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric previously had dismissed.

Turkey has been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as Witkoff is traveling in the region. A Turkish official later said the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.

Foreign ministers from Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they happen, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have permission to speak to journalists.

But whether Iran and the U.S. can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as Trump now has included Iran's nuclear program in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June.

On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone with his counterparts from Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, but did not mention a possible venue. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told Iranian state television that the talks are still expected to happen in the next few days but that the details, including where it will take place, are still being discussed.

U.S. Central Command said the drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier on Tuesday, with “unclear intent” and it “continued to fly toward the ship despite deescalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters.”

The Shahed-139 drone was shot down by an F-35C fighter jet from the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sailing about 500 miles (805 kilometers) from Iran’s southern coast, Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said. The incident took place just before sunrise, he told The Associated Press.

In a separate incident later Tuesday, the Revolutionary Guard harassed a merchant vessel flying the American flag and carrying an American crew, Hawkins said.

Two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship, the tanker Stena Imperative, “at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker,” Hawkins’ statement said.

The position of the incident appeared to be in Iranian territorial waters, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. Iran had warned of a naval drill by the Guard in recent days.

The guided missile destroyer USS McFaul responded and escorted the Stena Imperative with defensive air support, authorities said.

Witkoff met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and discussed plans for disarming Hamas ahead of possible reconstruction and the situation in Iran, Netanyahu’s office said.

Netanyahu warned Witkoff that “Iran has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to meet its commitments.”

Israel demands that any agreement with Iran include removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping the enrichment of uranium, limiting the creation of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran’s proxies, according to an official familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump’s first term, said it was “unimaginable that there can be a deal.”

“I think they may come away with some set of understandings,” Pompeo said at Dubai’s World Governments Summit. “But to think that there’s a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable.”

Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a top Khamenei adviser on security.

He suggested that if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, and move to direct talks only if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the U.S. long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran's theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hard-liners dismissing them.

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added.

“Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never stockpile nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price in return for this," he said.

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn't armed with the bomb.

Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed in the June war.

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Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Farnoush Amiri in New York, and Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.