JERUSALEM—President Donald Trump reached out through a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, attempting to initiate discussions aimed at dismantling Tehran’s unauthorized nuclear weapons program. However, the theocratic state rebuffed these efforts on Sunday following Trump’s latest warning to the regime.

During an interview with NBC on Saturday, Trump stated, “If they don’t agree to a deal, bombing will occur,” he warned. “However, there’s a possibility that if no deal is reached, I might reimplement secondary tariffs like I did four years ago.”

Trump added the U.S. and officials from the Islamic Republic are “talking.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated on Sunday, “We do not shy away from talks; it is the repeated breaches of promises that have generated issues for us,” as reported by the Associated Press. He further mentioned, “They must demonstrate their capability to build trust.” According to the AP, the White House has yet to comment on Iran’s refusal to engage in talks.

Pezeshkian still noted that in Iran’s response to the letter that indirect negotiations with the Trump administration were still possible.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has analyzed where Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is located. (Image provided by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) )

Brodsky said, “These Iranian officials believe they can lure the Trump administration into this arrangement and then President Trump will wave a magic wand and bring the entire Republican Party along with Democrats to support the deal and make it more politically durable than the 2015 JCPOA. This is all despite President Trump’s consistent and strong record in rejecting the JCPOA framework. It reflects desperation in Tehran and a desire to buy time with another failed diplomatic gambit. But it’s important to have eyes wide open here as to the games the Iranians will (and are already) playing.”

While Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” she did note that Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile.

In sharp contrast to U.S. intelligence since 2003, Fox News Digital has previously reported that European intelligence agencies believe Iran is working toward testing an atomic weapon, and sought illicit technology for its nuclear weapons program. 

Counter-proliferation experts, like the prominent physicist and nuclear specialist David Albright, have told Fox News that European intelligence institutions use an updated definition of construction of weapons of mass destruction to assess Iran’s progress in contrast to America’s alleged obsolete definition.

Fox News Digital sent press queries to the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council.

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.