Trump Says He Prefers Diplomacy With Iran; Tehran Calls a Deal ‘Within Reach’

President Trump said in his State of the Union address that he prefers diplomacy with Iran but will not let it obtain a nuclear weapon, and Iran’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that a deal is within reach if diplomacy is given priority, according to CBS News and Al Jazeera.

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy,” Trump said, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported, while vowing never to let Iran have a nuclear weapon. He also said the United States had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in last June’s strikes, a claim the International Atomic Energy Agency has questioned, CBS reported. ABC News rated a similar claim that the program had been “wiped out” as mostly false, finding it was severely damaged rather than destroyed and that much of the enriched uranium likely remains; Al Jazeera likewise reported that experts dispute Trump’s description.

Trump also said Iranian security forces killed 32,000 people during the recent protests, a figure far above earlier reports, CBS News and Al Jazeera reported. Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused him of repeating “big lies” about its nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and the protest death toll. Al Jazeera identified the spokesman as Esmaeil Baghaei, who said professional liars are good at creating the “illusion of truth.” CBS noted that the ministry compared the tactic to a propaganda maxim associated with Joseph Goebbels.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would “under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon,” CBS and Al Jazeera reported, and insisted on Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology. ABC News rated Trump’s assertion that Iran had never said it would not seek a nuclear weapon as false, noting that Iranian officials have repeatedly made that statement. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran remains open to diplomacy but would make an aggressor regret attacking during negotiations, according to CBS and Al Jazeera.

Nuclear talks between the two countries are scheduled to resume on Thursday in Geneva, CBS and Al Jazeera reported. Two later reports, from Defense News and Foreign Policy, described the military backdrop as the largest U.S. buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with Trump saying he prefers diplomacy but will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

The public statements left the two sides far apart on the facts even as both said they were willing to keep talking, with Trump saying he prefers diplomacy and Ghalibaf saying Iran remains open to negotiation. Trump’s description of Iran’s nuclear capacity and of the death toll in the protests were both disputed by outside assessments, as the reports above show, while Iranian officials repeated that they do not seek a nuclear weapon.