Iran denies peace talks after Trump's meeting claim amid shaky ceasefire

WASHINGTON, DC: Iran poured cold water on Donald Trump’s claims that the Middle Eastern nation has requested a meeting after trading a barrage of strikes amid the shaky ceasefire.

The 80-year-old President, who last week warned that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist" if the United States is forced to escalate military action, announced on Monday, June 29, that Washington and Tehran are scheduled to hold a crucial meeting in Doha on Tuesday.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also confirmed the US plans to dispatch Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to lead the talks.

Iran team will visit Qatar, but not to meet US officials

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei defied Trump’s statement, maintaining that no talks between Iran and the United States are ⁠scheduled in the coming days.

He said that an ​Iranian ⁠technical delegation ‌will visit Qatar this week, but it has ‌no relation to ‌US officials visiting the country.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, also denied earlier in the day that technical talks between Iran and the US had been scheduled this week.

The remarks came after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran would honor its commitments, provided Washington did the same, while slipping in a pointed jab seemingly aimed at the White House.

“Mutual understanding is a two-way street. If the American party adheres to the agreement, we will also fulfill our commitments.

“Our approach towards unreasonable grumbles and baseless threats relies on rationality and human dignity in decision-making, and decisive and unhesitant defense when it comes to action,” Pezeshkian said.

Trump says team headed to Doha

Despite Iran's claims of no peace talks this week, Trump has insisted that a US team has already taken off for Doha to discuss Iran's nuclear program during the meeting on Tuesday.

"I think they've already left, or they're just about getting ready to leave. So we'll see how that goes," Trump said while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office. "But the meeting in Doha is going to be, perhaps important, perhaps not, we're gonna find out."

"It's really very simple. It's the denuclearization of Iran. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon, and they're not gonna have a nuclear weapon," Trump said.

The peace talks came in the line of both countries exchanging a barrage of rocket fire, which threatened to destroy the fragile nuclear negotiations aimed at ending the war.

On Sunday, Iran said its naval and aerospace forces had launched a coordinated missile and drone assault on the US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, warning that any further violations would trigger a "crushing response."

Earlier, the US military said it had struck Iran for the second day after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz.