GENEVA, March 16. /TASS/. Iranian authorities have made no attempts to get in touch with Washington since the beginning of the US aggression, despite the American side’s allegations otherwise, Iranian Permanent Representative to the UN Geneva office and other Geneva-based international organizations Ali Bahreini told TASS.

US President Donald Trump said earlier that Tehran wants to make a deal, but Washington thinks that its terms are not quite attractive. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Tehran has never approached Washington with an invitation to talks and is not seeking a ceasefire as it is ready to defend itself as long as it takes.

According to Bahreini, "it is hard to say" what the US leader meant by saying this. "I don't know what the real intention of Donald Trump is because Donald Trump is a well-known fabricator of lies," he said. "And as our officials have said, there hasn't been any outreach on our side to the United States."

He also noted that Trump’s statements may indicate that things are not going the way the United States expected them to.

The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.