President Donald Trump said the United States will hold direct talks with Iran to discuss the nuclear deal, while Tehran insists the talks will be indirect.
This is reported by The New York Times.
The American president announced these plans after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and noted that Iran would be "in great danger" if the talks were not successful.
Instead, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that the talks would take place in Oman and with the help of mediators who would work with the two sides.
“Iran and the United States will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect high-level talks. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. The ball is in America’s court,” Araghchi wrote.
On the orders of Iranʼs Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran refused to hold direct nuclear talks with US officials. However, Ayatollah Khamenei has now changed his position and could potentially allow direct talks.
If Saturdayʼs round of talks is successful and productive, the ayatollah will also approve direct contacts between the two countries regarding the nuclear deal. The talks are expected to be led by Iranian Abbas Araghchi and Trumpʼs special representative, Stephen Witkoff.
"Everyone agrees that itʼs better to negotiate than to resort to the obvious. And the obvious is what we want to avoid, and so does Israel... Letʼs see if we can avoid a dangerous scenario. We hope for successful negotiations," said Donald Trump.
Iran is unlikely to agree to completely curtail its nuclear program. It now has the ability to produce fuel for a nuclear bomb in a matter of weeks, and a bomb itself in a matter of months. After last year’s missile exchanges with Israel, more and more people in Iran are openly saying that the country needs nuclear weapons for defense.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that any deal between Iran and the United States must follow the “Libyan scenario.” That is, Iran must completely destroy its nuclear infrastructure and take it out of the country. But unlike Libya, which has not had time to deploy its nuclear capabilities, Iran has a developed program that has been operating for many years and is partly located underground.
In 2015, Iran agreed to remove 97% of its enriched uranium under a deal that would have left the country with only minimal stockpiles and equipment for producing nuclear fuel. However, during his first presidency, Trump withdrew from the deal, and Iran was able to build up its capacity again.
Iranʼs nuclear facilities are now more vulnerable, especially after Israeli strikes, particularly on facilities where rocket fuel was produced. The fact that Iran agreed to talks at all shows how weakened its position is. However, it will still not agree to the complete destruction of its nuclear infrastructure.
Trumpʼs position on Iran
Last September, during the election campaign, Trump said he was open to a new nuclear deal with Iran. At the time, Politico noted that his statements were an attempt to ease tensions with the Iranian government — the Republican had been told a week earlier that Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump.
Trump did not go into details about future cooperation with Iran, but noted that negotiations are needed in any case — because of the threat posed by Iran with its desire to have nuclear weapons.
In early February, the American president signed a document that restores “maximum pressure” on Iran to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero and prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons.
And on February 6, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against an international network that funnels revenues from the sale of Iranian oil to the Iranian army, circumventing existing restrictions.
In March, Bloomberg wrote that Putin had agreed to help Trump in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
What preceded
The Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2015 by the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Germany and the EU. They agreed that the Iranian authorities would give up their nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Iran nuclear deal and imposed new sanctions against the Iranian regime.
Tehran resumed uranium production after Trump pulled out of the deal. Under Joe Biden’s presidency, Iran’s nuclear program has “advanced significantly,” Axios noted.
The Biden administration has been conducting indirect talks with Iran to revive the Iran nuclear deal. Those efforts collapsed in late 2022 when the United States accused Iran of making “unfounded” demands related to an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites. In the months that followed, the Trump administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was “off the table”.
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