Iran’s foreign minister says it has had requests to reopen negotiations, which collapsed after nuclear site bombings

Tehran is willing to restart nuclear talks with Washington as long as it is treated with “dignity and respect”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the Guardian.

Abbas Araghchi said only diplomacy worked, and disclosed fresh requests had come from intermediaries to reopen negotiations with the Trump administration. He said Iran did not have any undeclared nuclear sites, and Tehran could not yet allow the UN nuclear inspectorate to visit bombed nuclear sites for security reasons.

Araghchi is treading a difficult path since Iran does not want be seen to be acting from a position of weakness, and he insisted repeatedly that Iran had emerged stronger militarily and psychologically from the Israeli-US attack on its nuclear sites in June.

He was speaking at a security conference in Tehran where he restated that Iran had “an inalienable right to enrich uranium domestically that it will never give up” – the primary cause of the impasse in the previous talks.