TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has criticized the U.S. President Donald Trump over his recent remarks on Iran’s nuclear program, urging Washington to return to diplomacy instead of repeating past mistakes driven by false intelligence and Israeli influence.

In a post on X, Araghchi recalled his fifth round of talks with Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, on May 23, noting that Iran had made its position clear at the time: “Zero nuclear weapons means we do have a deal; zero enrichment means we do not have a deal.”

He said that if the U.S. president were to review the minutes of those meetings, he would see how close the two sides had come to reaching a historic nuclear agreement.

Drawing a parallel with the 2003 Iraq invasion, Araghchi wrote that Washington should remember there was never any real intelligence proving Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he said, that war resulted in “unfathomable destruction, thousands of dead American soldiers, and seven trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayers’ money wasted.”

The Iranian foreign minister added that similar false claims are now being made about Iran’s nuclear activities, noting Israel's deceiving of U.S. officials into promoting the notion that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon. “With that plan’s failure,” he said, “Israel is now trying to fabricate another threat from Iran’s defensive capabilities. But the American people have grown tired of fighting Israel’s forever wars.”

Emphasizing Iran’s resilience, Araghchi declared that “Iran is a great country, and Iranians are a great nation—the heirs of an ancient civilization. Buildings and machines can be destroyed, but our determination will never be shaken.”

He concluded his remarks by reaffirming that “there is no solution but a negotiated outcome.”

Araghchi’s remarks followed comments by U.S. President, who told sailors at a ceremony marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy at Naval Station Norfolk that Washington “would have to take care of” Iran again if Tehran resumed its alleged nuclear activities. Trump also praised the U.S. airstrikes in June on Iranian nuclear sites as “perfectly executed.”

He claimed that the strikes — carried out under what the Pentagon called Operation Midnight Hammer — had targeted key facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, and that they prevented Iran from being “within a month” of developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly denied these allegations.

On June 13, Israel launched a blatant and unprovoked attack against Iran, triggering a 12-day war that killed at least 1,064 people, including senior military commanders, nuclear scientists, and civilians. The United States also joined the conflict by bombing three Iranian nuclear sites, in what Tehran called a serious violation of international law.

In retaliation, Iran’s Armed Forces targeted strategic positions across the occupied territories as well as the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base in West Asia.