WASHINGTON/DUBAI: The United States and Iran agreed on Friday to hold talks in Oman, officials from both sides announced. However, tensions persist over the US’ insistence that negotiations include Iran’s missile arsenal and Iran’s pledge to only discuss its nuclear program.
The delicate diplomatic effort comes amid rising tensions as the United States ramps up its military presence in the Middle East and regional players seek to avoid a military conflict that many fear could escalate into a broader war.
Differences in recent days over the scope and venue of the talks have raised questions about whether they will take place and left open the possibility that US President Donald Trump will carry out his threat to attack Iran.
Asked Wednesday if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei should be worried, President Trump told NBC News: “I would say he should be very concerned. Yes, he should be worried.” “They are negotiating with us,” he added, without elaborating.
After Trump’s speech, U.S. and Iranian officials announced that the two countries had agreed to move the talks to Muscat after initially accepting Istanbul.
But there was no sign that they found common ground on the topic.
Iran has called for negotiations to be limited to discussing its long-running nuclear conflict with the West. But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a different view Wednesday. “If the Iranians want to meet, we are ready,” Rubio told reporters. But he added that talks needed to go beyond the nuclear issue and include issues such as the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed proxies across the Middle East and its treatment of its own citizens.
However, a senior Iranian official said Iran’s missile program was “off the table.” Another Iranian official said Iran welcomes negotiations over the nuclear conflict, but that the U.S. insistence on addressing non-nuclear issues could jeopardize negotiations.
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was scheduled to participate in the talks along with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi, officials said.
Change of venue
The talks were originally scheduled for Turkey, but Iran wanted to hold them in Oman as a continuation of previous talks in the Gulf Arab state, which focused strictly on Tehran’s nuclear program, regional officials said.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are aimed at peace, not military, while the United States and Israel condemn its past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Gulf officials have said the talks could be mediated by multiple countries, but Iran wants a two-way format limited to the United States and Tehran. The diplomatic effort follows President Trump’s threat of military action against Iran and the expansion of naval power to the Gulf during last month’s bloody crackdown on protesters.
Since President Trump threatened Iran last month, the United States has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East, including aircraft carriers, other warships, fighter jets, reconnaissance planes and aerial refueling tankers.
After Israel and the United States bombed the Islamic Republic last summer, there are growing fears that new friction could ignite a major conflagration between regional countries that could bounce back home or cause long-term chaos in Iran. President Trump continues to consider options for attacking Iran, officials said. Oil prices rose as a result of the tensions.
nuclear conflict
President Trump warned that “bad things” were likely to happen if a deal could not be reached and that the standoff would ratchet up pressure on the Islamic Republic, leading to threats of airstrikes. Six current and former Iranian officials say Iranian leaders are increasingly concerned that the U.S. attack could force an already enraged population back into the streets and undermine their grip on power.
President Trump did not follow through on his threat to intervene during last month’s crackdown, but he has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran and sent a platoon to Iran’s coast. Iran is also hoping for a deal that would lead to the lifting of Western sanctions over its nuclear program, which have ravaged Iran’s economy and were a key factor in last month’s unrest.
Ballistic missile stockpile
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that President Trump had asked for three conditions for resuming talks: no enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program and an end to aid to regional proxies.
Iran has long argued that all three demands are an unacceptable violation of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters that Iranian clerics view its ballistic missile program as a bigger hurdle than uranium enrichment.
Iranian officials said there should be no preconditions to the talks and that Iran was willing to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, insisting it was for peace, not military purposes.
Since the U.S. airstrikes in June, the Iranian government has announced that uranium enrichment operations have stopped.
In June, the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets and participated in the final stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign that saw Iran counterattack Israel with missiles and drones.
Iran said it had refilled its missile stockpile after last year’s war with Israel and warned it would launch missiles if its security was threatened. In an incident first reported by Reuters, the US military said on Tuesday it shot down an Iranian drone that approached the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in an “aggressive” manner in the Arabian Sea, sparking tensions.
In a separate incident in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops approached a U.S.-flagged tanker at high speed, threatened to board it and seize it.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeira Pamuk, Andrew Mills and Parisa Hafezi; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jasper Ward in Washington; Writing by Michael George, Angus McDowall and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Aidan Lewis, Chizu Nomiyama and Rod Nickell)
