Iran rules out new nuclear talks until attacks stop

Iran said that he would not resume talks about his nuclear program during his crisis, a few hours after the Israeli Defense Minister warned against an “prolonged” conflict with the Islamic Republic.

The fighting raged on Friday while Iran pulled a salve of missiles in northern Israel and Israel has targeted dozens of sites in Iran.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Eyal Zamir said in a video speech that his country should be ready for an “prolonged campaign” and warned of “difficult days to come”.

His Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, met with European diplomats in Geneva who urged him to revive diplomatic efforts with the United States on his country’s nuclear program.

Araghchi said that Iran was ready to consider diplomacy only once “the aggression of attack in Israel is arrested”.

Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful, he insisted and Israel’s attacks violated international law. Iran, he added, would continue to “exercise its legitimate law of self-defense”.

“I clearly show that Iran’s defense capacities are not negotiable,” he said.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN accused Iran of having a “genocidal program” and of constituting a continuous threat, adding that Israel would not stop targeting nuclear installations before having been “dismantled”.

US President Donald Trump said Iran had a “maximum” two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, suggesting that he could make a decision before the deadline for 14 days he set on Thursday.

“I give them a while, and I would say that two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told journalists.

The goal, he said, was “to see if people come back or not”.

The American president was also disdainful of talks between Araghchi and the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the EU.

“Iran does not want to speak to Europe,” said Trump. “They want to talk to us. Europe will not be able to help you.”

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said the United States had provided a “short time window” to resolve the crisis in the Middle East which was “perilous and fatal fatal”.

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noel Barrot, said that the ministers had invited the Iranian minister to “examine negotiations with all the parties, including the United States, without waiting for the cessation of strikes”.

Barrot added that there could be “no final solution by military means to the Iranian nuclear problem” and warned that it was “dangerous to want to impose a change of diet” in Iran.

Israel was affected by a new series of Iranian strikes on Friday, the Israeli army reporting an attack of 20 missiles targeting Haifa.

An Israeli woman has died of a heart attack, bearing the number of Israeli deaths since the start of the conflict at 25.

Israeli defense forces have said that they have attacked ballistic storage and launch sites in western Iran.

During last week, Israeli air strikes destroyed Iranian military facilities and military weapons and killed military commanders and nuclear scientists.

The Iranian Ministry of Health said on Sunday that at least 224 people had been killed, while a human rights group had taken the unofficial assessment at 639.

Iran has launched hundreds of ballistic missiles in Israel in response to air strikes.