Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran had neither requested a ceasefire nor sought negotiations with Washington amid the ongoing war with the United States and Israel, despite US President Donald Trump claiming Tehran appeared ready to agree on terms unsuitable to Washington.

“No, we never asked for a ceasefire, and we have never asked even for negotiation. We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes,” Araghchi said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.

He also rejected the assessment that the conflict represented a “war of survival” for Iran, arguing that his country was “stable and strong enough.”

“We are only defending our people from [this] act of aggression,” he said.

In the same interview, Araghchi said Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium was now buried “under the rubble,” following US and Israeli strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities last June.

Iran’s estimated 440 kilograms of enriched uranium — enriched to up to 60 percent fissile purity, which can relatively easily be raised to the 90% level considered weapons-grade — were believed to be stored deep underground at the Isfahan nuclear site.

“Our nuclear facilities were attacked, and everything is under the rubble,” Araghchi said.

He acknowledged that the material could potentially be retrieved, but said Tehran currently had no plan to do so.

“Of course, you know there is the possibility to retrieve them, but under the supervision of the [International Atomic Energy Agency],” he said. “If one day we come to the conclusion to do that, it would be under the supervision of the agency. But for the time being, we have no program. We have no plan to recover them from under the rubble.”

Washington had demanded that Iran relinquish the stockpile in nuclear........

© The Times of Israel