Although weakened by airstrikes, sanctions and domestic unrest, Tehran is surprisingly bullish before talks with US

When it comes to Iran and Donald Trump, there is so much bluff, backed by military hardware, that the truth rarely makes an appearance.

It appears that a bullish Iran is going into negotiations with the US on Friday adopting maximalist positions that do not seem greatly different to those it adopted in the five rounds of talks before the negotiations were abruptly halted by the surprise Israeli attack on Iran last June.

Pressure mounts after government said it would publish names of those killed during recent unrest

Calls are growing inside Iran for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would oversee the publication of the names of the deceased.

The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to head off claims that crimes against humanity have been committed and that as many as 30,000 Iranians have been killed. Iran’s official death toll released by the Martyr’s Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security services.

Tehran’s nuclear ambitions date back to the shah and the 1970s and remains undimmed despite the damage caused by sanctions

A desperate effort to avert war between the US and Iran is once again under way, but trying to locate common ground between the two countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme has been made more difficult by escalating US demands, and by Iran’s ideological, deeply nationalist attachment to the right to enrich uranium.

Iran’s ambitions to run its own nuclear programme pre-date the arrival of the theocratic state in 1979, and can be traced back to the mid-1970s when the shah announced plans to build 20 civil nuclear power stations. This prompted an undignified scramble among western nations to be part of the action, with the UK energy secretary at the time, Tony Benn, having more than a walk-on part.

US president declines to say whether he plans Venezuela-like operation, after Tehran signalled it was ready for talks

• Killing Khamenei? Hitting military sites? It is unclear what a US attack on Iran would achieve

Donald Trump has said he believes Tehran wants to make a deal to head off a regional conflict, as he claimed the US “armada” near Iran was bigger than the taskforce deployed to topple Venezuela’s leader.

“We have a large armada, flotilla, call it whatever you want, heading toward Iran right now, even larger than what we had in Venezuela,” the US president told reporters on Friday.