As Iran’s foreign minister met with counterparts from Britain, France, and Germany at Geneva Friday in the hope of preventing American involvement in its war, Tehran officials issued harsh anti-American statements and made tough demands of the talks.     

American representatives were conspicuously absent from Friday’s session at Geneva, where the Iranian, Abbas Araghchi, met with foreign ministers of the three European members of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the E-3. A day earlier, the White House offered a two-week chance for diplomacy to succeed before deciding whether to join Israel’s military campaign against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“It is the Americans who want talks,” Mr. Araghchi told Iranian television from Geneva. “We made it explicitly clear to them that as long as this aggression and invasion continues, there is absolutely no room for talk or diplomacy. We have nothing to discuss with the United States, which is a partner in these crimes.”

America must stop Israel if it wants to facilitate the talks, Mr. Araghchi said, but President Trump told reporters: “It’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing.” The president added that Iran must talk to America, rather than the Europeans. 

The Iranians “want to make it look like it’s not Tehran which is resistant to diplomacy, even as they refuse to meet with the U.S. directly while Israel is striking,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. “The E-3 is not the audience that matters, it’s President Trump, and he is employing coercive diplomacy to try and get the Iranians to agree to his terms.”

During a Friday United Nations Security Council session, many diplomats urged Mr. Trump to choose diplomacy and avoid joining Israel’s Operation Rising Lion. During the meeting, the International Atomic Energy Agency director, Rafael Grossi, warned that striking certain nuclear sites could spread radioactivity across Iran and to neighboring countries. 

Mr. Grossi also urged a return to diplomacy and nuclear inspections. Yet, even as Iran is reeling under sustained Israeli strikes on its nuclear sites and missile launchers, it is rejecting Mr. Trump’s conditions for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.

Mr. Trump demands that the Islamic Republic end all nuclear pursuit, including a complete halt to all enrichment activities on Iranian soil. Tehran is pushing back: “We can reduce the level of enrichment, but we will not stop it completely,” a Tehran presidential spokesman, Majid Farahani, told CNN Friday. 

It all sounds too familiar. “Iran’s leaders could have avoided this conflict had they agreed to a deal that would have prevented them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, but they refused to do so, choosing instead to delay and deny,” the American acting UN ambassador, Dorothy Shea, told the Security Council.  

While Israeli officials say that they support a good nuclear deal, they are skeptical that such a deal is reachable. “We have seen diplomatic talks for the last few decades,” the Israeli UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told reporters. “If there will be a genuine effort to dismantle the capabilities of Iran, then that’s something we can consider, but if it is going to be like another session and debates, that’s not going to work.” 

America’s European allies, though, urged Washington to maintain the talks. “A diplomatic solution is in the interests of all concerned,” the United Kingdom’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told the council. “Even now, it is not out of reach. Now is the time for restraint, calm and a return to diplomacy and dialogue.

The Iranian UN ambassador, Amir-Saeid Iravani, though, did not even mention the Geneva negotiations. Instead, he denounced America’s alliance with Israel. “The U.S. has publicly threatened to strike Iran’s safeguard nuclear facilities,” he said. “Such acts constitute a flagrant violation” of international law. 

At the outset of the council session, Mr. Grossi warned that if Israel struck a nuclear site at Bushehr, “it would result in a very high release of radioactivity to the environment.” Similarly, the top nuclear inspector added, “a hit that disabled the only two lines supplying electrical power to the plant could cause its reactor score to melt, which could result in a high release of radioactivity to the environment.”

Israel has so far refrained from hitting Bushehr. Mr. Grossi confirmed that the sites it did strike, including Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center at Natanz and the inactive plutonium plant at Arak, have not resulted in any changes in radioactivity levels in these areas.

The destruction of the deeply dug Fordow facility, which is widely described as the “crown jewel” of Iran’s nuclear program, would similarly not be expected to release radioactive particles. If the diplomatic efforts fail before early July, America could hasten the end of the efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions by dispatching to the Fordow area B-2 bombers with payloads of 30,000-pound Maximum Ordnance Penetrator bombs.