“The US is threatening militarism. In my opinion, this threat is unwise. Iran is capable of retaliating and will definitely inflict a blow,” Khamenei said in a meeting.

His remarks came in the backdrop of local media reports that said the foreign minister Abbas Araghchi had received US President Donald Trump’s letter, which was delivered by senior UAE official Anwar Gargash, an AFP report said.

Trump’s letter aimed at ‘deceiving public opinion’

Khamenei, who said that he had not yet personally seen the letter, termed Trump’s letter as a move to “deceive public opinion”. He said that the reason as to why Iran is not willing negotiate with the US is that the same American president “tore up the signed JCPOA agreement. How could we hold negotiations with US when we know they don’t fulfill their commitments?”

During his first term, Trump had ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that obstructed Iran’s economy.

And since returning to the White House for a second term, the US president has called for a new nuclear deal with Iran, while reinstating his “maximum pressure” sanctions to isolate Tehran from the global economy and drive down its oil exports towards zero.

Khamenei, in a series of posts on X, noted that if the goal of negotiating a new deal with the US meant that the sanctions would be removed then, he clarified, it won’t result in the sanctions being actually lifted.

“It (negotiating) will cause the knot of sanctions to become tighter and pressure to increase,” he added.

The Iranian supreme leader exuded confidence in saying that if Tehran wanted to build nuclear weapons, then the US would not have been able to stop it from doing so. However, “the fact that we neither possess nor seek nuclear weapons is because we ourselves don’t want to”.

Khamenei, who holds the final decision in any state matter, said that though Iran was not looking to start a war but, “if someone takes action, our response will be decisive and certain”.