The prospect of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program is “meaningless” unless Israel stops striking her country, Iran’s government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told CNN Saturday at her office in northern Tehran.
The streets were fairly quiet in the Iranian capital, usually a bustling metropolis of over 9 million people. Over the past few days, traffic has increased as more Iranians return to the city after fleeing Israel’s bombing during earlier days of the conflict.
Despite being the voice of a government exchanging blows with a nuclear power (and waiting on whether to expect fire from the United States), Mohajerani was relaxed. The first woman to serve as Iranian government spokesperson, she came into her role less than a year ago, appointed by President Masoud Pezeshkian last August.
She noted that Iran has endured numerous cycles of negotiations about its nuclear activities, yet none have resulted in a sustained long-term deal.
“These past years we’ve been through a painful experience twice,” Mohajerani said, pointing to US President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA agreement in 2018.
No matter how eager Trump might be to bring Iran to the negotiating table, Mohajerani said Iran does not want to be left empty-handed again. And before talks begin, Israel’s bombing must stop, she said, emphasizing a point made by multiple Iranian officials in recent days.
“This time we were in the middle of negotiations again when this attack took place,” Mohajerani said. “Therefore, as our officials have already stated, as long as there are attacks, negotiations will be meaningless. When the attacks stop, we will think about it.”
Israel’s initial, wide-ranging operation on June 13 killed some of the most powerful commanders in the Iranian military and damaged Iranian uranium enrichment sites. Since then, daily strikes have damaged its nuclear power plants, set its largest natural gas field aflame and obliterated the newsroom of one of the country’s state-run media channels.
Still, Mohajerani insists that Iran is ready for whatever the Israelis throw at them next.
“Both the government and the nation of Iran are totally robust in defense,” she said. “Our military force is completely ready to prevent such attacks from happening again, and in case the need arises to practice legitimate defense.”
So far, at least 430 civilians in Iran have been killed in the strikes, and thousands of others wounded, according to the Iranian government. At a hospital in Tehran, one woman named Nisrine told CNN that she “barely made it to the door” after being injured in an Israeli strike. One of her neighbors called emergency services, who brought her to a hospital.
“I’ve had five operations,” she said from her hospital bed. “In my abdomen area, my kidney, my liver.”
Iran’s missile-and-UAV-driven response, meanwhile, has killed 24 in Israel, wounding over 1,200 others, according to figures from the Israeli government. Iranian missiles have struck deep within Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, with one missile hitting a hospital.
Nuclear energy ‘means life to us’
At the heart of the conflict is the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel and the United States have long accused Iran of working towards a nuclear bomb. Speaking with CNN, Mohajerani repeated what Iranian officials have maintained for years: that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is not for weapons-making, but rather for energy production.
“Nuclear energy does not mean war to us,” Mohajerani said. “It means life to us. Therefore, since the subject of enrichment and the subject of life are the same path to us, not leading to war, we believe enrichment is our right.”
Nonetheless, Israeli officials have cast their bombing campaign in existential terms, going so far as to say that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to the entire planet.
“We act to prevent a huge threat—primarily to the existence of Israel, but also to the entire region, Europe, and the world order,” declared Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Rishon Lezion.
It remains unclear whether Washington will join the fray. Trump has said he will decide whether to intervene within the next two weeks, but has already joined Israeli officials in publicly pondering the benefits of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on June 17. “He is an easy target but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
Mohajerani was blunt when asked about the possibility that Israel or the US might take direct aim at her country’s head of state.
“This shows that Israel does not understand the unity of the Iranian people,” Mohajerani said. “Israel better not do something for which it can’t pay the damage. The Iranian people are backing their leader.”
“We should not forget that for all of us Iranians today, Iran is a united concept, which we will certainly defend.”
