President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, in separate interviews this weekend, said the post-election unrest in Iran would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations.

In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Obama said despite the arrests of opposition leaders in Iran, the door on negotiations with the Iranian government would not be closed.
Iran, as a country that has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), insists that its nuclear activities are solely aimed at producing electricity to meet the nation’s growing demand. The International Atomic Energy Agency is monitoring all the processes of nuclear activities in Iran by installing cameras and making regular inspections.
“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Obama said.
Biden echoed the same themes in an interview conducted in Iraq and broadcast Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.”
But the vice president argued that the United States “cannot dictate” Israel’s decisions about whether to strike the plants at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. But he added that the United States would not let any other nation determine its approach to national security, including the wisdom of engagement. “If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage,” he said.
However, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, warned that any military strike on Iran “could be very destabilizing.”
Alaeddin Broujerdi, the head of Iran's parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, said Monday that Tehran is ready to take ""real and decisive"" action if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities.
""Both the U.S. and Israel are aware of the consequence of an erroneous decision,"" Broujerdi, who was visiting Japan as chairman of the Iran-Japan Parliamentary Friendship League, told reporters at the Iranian Embassy in Tokyo. ""I believe our response will be real and decisive.""
---------Back-channel indications
Before Iran’s election on June 12, the president’s top aides said, they received back-channel indications from Iran that the country would respond to Obama’s overtures this summer. Senior administration officials said they have heard nothing from Iran’s leaders.
Obama hinted at an even shorter schedule during the interview on Saturday. “We will have to assess in coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door,” he said.
Obama declined to talk about the preparations for a tougher line. But as he prepared to leave on Sunday for Moscow, he said the United States now had more leverage to pressure Iran because he had succeeded in getting “countries like Russia and China to take these issues seriously.”
The incoming director general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Friday that he has not seen any documented evidence that Iran is trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear weapons.
“I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this,” Yukiya Amano told Reuters when asked whether he believed Iran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.