TEHRAN: Iran's president said the Islamic republic was not "at all" seeking a nuclear weapon as talks with the United States were due to begin in Switzerland on Thursday in a last-ditch bid to avert war.
The talks mediated by Oman follow a massive US military build-up in the region not seen in decades, with President Donald Trump threatening to strike Iran if a deal is not reached.
"Our Supreme Leader has already stated that we will not have nuclear weapons at all," President Masoud Pezeshkian said, in a reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While Iran has insisted the talks focus solely on its nuclear program, the US wants Tehran's missile programme and its "support" for groups in the region curtailed.
'Sinister nuclear ambitions'
The developments follow a massive protest movement in Iran.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump accused Iran of "pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions", though Tehran has always insisted its program is for civilian purposes.
Trump also claimed Tehran had "already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America".
'Big lies'
The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims "big lies".
The maximum range of Iran's missiles is 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed.
However the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000 kilometers -- less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.
Trump's State of the Union accusations in Congress were delivered in the same forum in which then-president George W Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
'A big, big problem'
Ahead of Thursday's talks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iran must also negotiate on its missile program, calling Tehran's refusal to discuss ballistic weapons "a big, big problem".
He followed up by saying "the president wants diplomatic solutions".
But US Vice President JD Vance told Iran to take Trump's threats "seriously", saying the US president had a "right" to use military action.
"You can't let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons," Vance told "America's Newsroom" on Fox News.
On Feb. 19, Trump said Iran had 15 days to make a deal.
'Expect a war'
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation at the talks, has called them "a historic opportunity", adding that a deal was "within reach".
In a foreign ministry statement that followed a meeting with his Oman counterpart, Araghchi said the success of the US negotiations depend "on the seriousness of the other side and its avoidance of contradictory behaviour and positions".
The US will be represented by envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka.
The two countries held talks earlier this month in Oman, which is mediating the negotiations, then gathered for a second round in Geneva last week.
United Nations nuclear chief Rafael Grossi will likely attend the third round of talks on Thursday between Iran and the United States, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said.
"It is also likely that the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency will join these talks, as was the case in the previous round," foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told state TV.
Iran’s foreign ministry says that talks with the US will focus exclusively on the nuclear issue.
Israeli strikes
A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
In Jan., Tehran launched a mass crackdown on nationwide protests.
Trump threatened several times to intervene to "help" the Iranian people.
'Expect a war'
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that "the region seems to expect a war".
"There's a lot of apprehension at this point, because the expectation is that this time" a war would be "bigger" than the one in June.
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