Ayatollah Khamenei: 'There will not be any war with the US'

Tehran: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday there would no war with the US despite mounting tensions.

In comments carried by state TV, Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated Iran won't negotiate with the US on a nuclear deal. "There won't be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance."

Iranian leader made the remarks at a meeting with the heads of the country's executive, judiciary, and legislative branches as well as other senior officials, parliamentarians and top miitary commanders.

The Leader emphasised any confrontation between the US and Iran would not be "a military one," and that "there was not going to be any war."

"The Iranian nation's definite option will be resistance in the face of the US, and in this confrontation, the US would be forced into a retreat," Ayatollah Khamenei said. "Neither we nor they, who know war will not be in their interest, are after war."

Ayatollah Khamenei further explained that the confrontation between the two sides is "a clash of wills," asserting that Iran would be the ultimate victor of this battle.

He ruled out any negotiation with the US as long as Washington sticks with its hostile approach against the Islamic Republic, saying Washington would be attempting to undermine Iran's "points of strength," such as its defensive power or its strategic regional influence, in any such interaction.

The leader further played down Washington's highly belligerent rhetoric against Iran, saying its real capability did not match its loud bluster, and that it "needs to engage in [such bluster]."

In Sochi, Russia, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the US doesn't want war but vowed to keep pressuring Tehran. "We fundamentally do not see a war with Iran," he told a joint news conference with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Earlier Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a meeting that his country is "too great to be intimidated" by anyone. "God willing we will pass this difficult period with glory and our heads held high, and defeat the enemy," state media quoted him as saying on Monday.

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States a year ago from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers under which Tehran curbed its uranium enrichment capacity, a potential pathway to a nuclear bomb, and won sanctions relief in return.Since then, Trump has ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, seeking to reduce its lifeblood oil exports to zero, to push Tehran into fresh negotiations on a broader arms control deal, targeting in part the Iranian ballistic missile program.