US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says US ready to negotiate with Iran without preconditions, despite strengthened military presence

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration would be ready to negotiate with Iran without preconditions, even as an American fighter bomber and aircraft carrier practised strike operations in the Arabian Sea.

Iran sent similarly mixed messages over the weekend as weeks of tensions between the countries continued to smoulder. Pompeo was responding to Iranian President Hassan Rowhani’s expression of willingness to negotiate with the US as long as his country was not bullied into doing so. But earlier Sunday, an Iranian military official warned that all US military forces in the Gulf were within range of his country’s missiles.

Pompeo spoke after meeting with officials in Switzerland, which has represented American interests in Iran since the countries severed ties four decades ago.

“We’re prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions,” he said. “But the American effort to fundamentally reverse the malign activity of the Islamic Republic, this revolutionary force, is going to continue.”

The US has been strengthening its military presence in the Gulf in response to unspecified threats of attacks from Iran. The joint exercise between a B-52 bomber and an aircraft carrier was reported by the Associated Press.

Frictions spiked in the Gulf after the US announced in April that it would tighten sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, prompting an Iranian threat to scale back commitments under the 2015 multipower nuclear deal Washington quit a year ago. But the delay of sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical industry suggests the Trump administration may be seeking to dial back tensions, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.