Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran has repeatedly announced that it seeks dialogue but will never succumb to force and pressure and hold negotiations “at any cost”.

“It is not acceptable to impose sanctions and say that you should have no missiles or weapons, and then talk about negotiations again,” Pezeshkian said in a meeting with elites and intellectuals of Tehran Province on Thursday.

He added that negotiations must be conducted with dignity and reiterated Iran’s opposition to accepting bullying and granting concessions in return for the talks.

“If they come with dignity, we will negotiate, but we will not yield to coercion … from the beginning, we have declared that we seek dialogue and negotiation, but not at any cost,” he said. 

The remarks come as US President Donald Trump, who walked out of a multi-party and UN-endorsed nuclear agreement between Iran and others in 2018, has claimed to be interested in engaging in talks with Iran as he has resumed its so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. 

“He thinks that if he comes and threatens us, we will back down tomorrow and say, ‘Alright, we accept whatever you say.’ We are human beings with dignity. If they come with dignity, we will have a dialogue, but we are not going to yield to coercion,” Pezeshkian said, referring to his American counterpart.

On February 4, Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum restoring his so-called “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran that was initiated during his first tenure.

The move came two days after Trump said he was willing to revive negotiations with Iran.

In May 2018, the US left the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, restoring the sanctions that the deal had lifted, and mounted even more illegal economic restrictions against the Islamic Republic.

On February 7, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said experience has shown that negotiations with the US have no effect on solving Iran’s problems.

“Some people pretend that if we sit at the negotiating table, some problem will be solved, but the fact that we must understand correctly is that negotiating with the US has no effect on solving the country’s problems,” the Leader stated.

US, Europe supported Israel’s ‘brutality’, gave bombs to regime

Elsewhere in his remarks, Pezeshkian pointed to the Israeli regime’s crimes in Gaza and Lebanon and said, “No awakened conscience will accept the moves taken by the criminal Israel against the defenseless people in Gaza, Lebanon, and Palestine.”

He added that the United States and Europe not only supported the Israeli regime’s “brutality” but gave bombs and weapons to it.

“If one billion Muslims in the region were united as brothers, the genocidal Zionist regime, with a population of two million, would not be able to create such a situation for Muslims,” the Iranian president pointed out.

He slammed plots to provoke ethnic and religious division among regional nations and said no country holds the child-killing Israeli regime accountable for its crimes due to the US support for it.

He emphasized that Iran would never be afraid of the US and Israel and expressed confidence that the country would be able to solve problems.