President Donald Trump said on Monday that he believes Iran “would like to make a deal” on nuclear disarmament, while Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi became the latest senior Iranian official to rule out the possibility of negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

Trump expressed optimism about negotiations with Iran during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in Tokyo, where he had traveled to become the first world leader to meet with Japanese Emperor Naruhito after his ascension to the throne at the beginning of May.

“I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal, and I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen,” Trump said.

Trump noted that his host Prime Minister Abe is “very close with the leadership of Iran” and implied that relationship might be useful when dealing with Tehran.

“The prime minister’s already spoken to me about that and I do believe that Iran would like to talk. And if they’d like to talk, we’d like to talk also. We’ll see what happens,” he said.

“It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership,” Trump said of Iran. “We aren’t looking for regime change. I just want to make that clear. We are looking for no nuclear weapons.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi rejected both direct talks with Washington and indirect negotiations through an interlocutor such as Abe during a trip to Oman on Sunday.

Araqchi denounced U.S. sanctions against Iran as “a failed experiment that has been tried many times before” and said Tehran prefers developing a Middle Eastern alliance to oppose U.S. policy instead of dealing with Washington.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to establish balanced and constructive relations with all Persian Gulf region’s states on the basis of mutual respect and interests,” he said.

Iranian state media reported Trump’s comments as the United States backing down from “war threats” but stuck the regime line that negotiations with the U.S. are off the table.

Despite Tehran’s intransigent attitude, the Wall Street Journal noted on Monday that options for the theocracy are narrowing because most potential buyers for its oil have been driven away by U.S. sanctions, including buyers such as China, India, and Turkey that the Iranians were heavily counting on to provide relief from American pressure.