'No Negotiations on the Nuclear Issue': Iran Pushes Back Hours After Trump Announces Deal Terms

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Within hours of President Donald Trump publicly announcing what he described as the terms of an emerging agreement with Iran, including the destruction of the country's enriched uranium and the immediate lifting of the US naval blockade, Tehran's foreign ministry issued a flat denial that any nuclear negotiations were taking place at all.

"At this stage, we are focused on ending the war, and there are no negotiations on the nuclear issue," ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told Iranian state television on Friday.

The statement landed as a direct rebuttal to Trump's earlier Truth Social post, in which the US president laid out a detailed framework: 

Iran would never be permitted to possess a nuclear weapon; the Strait of Hormuz would be opened immediately with no tolls and unrestricted traffic in both directions; the naval blockade — which Trump called "amazing and unprecedented" — would now be lifted; and Iran's enriched uranium, buried beneath sites he said were sealed by collapsed mountains following a B-2 bomber strike 11 months ago, would be excavated by the United States in coordination with Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and destroyed.

The gap between the two accounts, one from a sitting US president posting publicly on social media, the other from Iran's official foreign ministry spokesman speaking on state television, left the status of any agreement deeply uncertain on Friday evening.

Trump had framed his post as a near-final declaration, stating he would convene in the Situation Room to make a final determination.

 Baqaei's response drew a sharp distinction between the ceasefire process and any broader nuclear arrangement, suggesting Tehran views the two tracks as entirely separate, and that it is not prepared to acknowledge the latter as active diplomacy.

The exchange follows days of reported back-channel movement. NBC News had previously reported that negotiating teams from both countries reached agreement on ceasefire terms in Doha, Qatar, with the Iranian side having briefed its leadership on the details.

The American team had been awaiting Trump's green light, a delay that had held up any formal announcement.

Earlier on Friday, Iran's parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf had issued his own three-point statement, drawing a hard line between military capability and diplomatic concession.

"We achieve our gains not through negotiations, but through missiles," he wrote. "In negotiations, we only clarify them." 

He added that Tehran would take no preemptive steps before the other side moved — a posture consistent with Baqaei's subsequent denial of active nuclear talks.

American officials, meanwhile, had already been cautioning that any agreement remained fragile and could collapse at any moment. 

CNN noted that Trump faces sustained pressure from within his own party and from the Israeli government, both of which have urged him not to ease pressure on Tehran or offer concessions.