Despite speaking of a policy change in Washington, the United States says it will enter into dialogue with Iran on the presumption that Tehran is after ""ballistic nuclear weapons"".

""I can assure that it's a topic that we'll bring up,"" White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Saturday.
His comments come while Tehran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is peaceful in nature and the UN nuclear watchdog in its latest report confirmed that the agency has been able to continue ""to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.""
""The Iranians have responsibilities to the international community to walk away from their ballistic nuclear weapons program. That's what the focus from our side will be in these talks, and that's our goal,"" Gibbs said.
This is while the U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier vowed to engage Iran in diplomatic dialogue over its nuclear program without any preconditions. However, his administration has taken a stance against Iran's peaceful nuclear program signaling that Washington's politicians will attend the talks with their minds already made up.
Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said on Saturday that ""since the beginning of the Iranian nuclear case, Washington has misjudged the situation, drawn up a wrong strategy and tried to feed it to other states.""
""By maneuvering on a deterrent strategy against Iran, the U.S. is trying to take full control of the military power of regional states,"" he was quoted by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) as saying.
On Friday, however, the United States conceded that it would accept Iran's offer of wide-ranging talks with major powers and consider its recently submitted package of proposals.
The package was submitted to the representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the U.S., the UK, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany on Wednesday.
The U.S. had called the proposals unresponsive to its concerns. However, Russia said the package could serve as a basis for negotiations.
(Source: Press TV)