The United States is willing to hold unconditional talks with Iran to ease tensions between the two countries, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday, but Tehran held out little hope for new negotiations.

"We are prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions. We are ready to sit down with them," Pompeo said at a news conference in Switzerland. But the top U.S. diplomat added that "the American effort to fundamentally reverse the malign activity of this Islamic Republic, this revolutionary force, is going to continue."

He said the U.S. is "certainly prepared to have that conversation when the Iranians can prove that they want to behave like a normal nation."

But Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview on the ABC News network in the U.S., that new talks with Washington are "not very likely.”

Zarif added, “Talking is the continuation of the process of pressure... this may work in a real estate market. It does not work in dealing with Iran."

He called past talks with the United States, in which the U.S. agreed to the 2015 international pact to curb Tehran's ambitions only to have President Donald Trump abrogate it, were "not very optimistic and does not provide an optimistic perspective for a future deal."

He contended, "People think twice before they talk to the United States because they know what they agree to today may not hold tomorrow."

Any possibility of talks between the two countries comes after a series of provocations. After pulling out of the international nuclear deal, Trump subsequently reimposed U.S. economic sanctions in an effort to end Iranian oil exports to the global market, a financial lifeline for the Islamic republic.

Source : VOA