The US and Iran were to begin high-stakes talks on Tehran’s nuclear program yesterday, with US President Donald Trump threatening military action should they fail to produce a new deal.
They would be the highest-level discussions between the foes since an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program crumbled with Trump pulling out in 2018 during his first term in office.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi were to lead the discussions behind closed doors in Muscat, the capital of Oman, which has long played a mediating role between Iran and Western countries.
Photo: AP
Iran’s official IRNA news agency yesterday morning said that the delegation headed by Araghchi had departed Tehran for Muscat.
“I want Iran to be a wonderful, great, happy country, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, hours before the talks were due to begin.
He had made a surprise announcement on Monday that the talks would occur.
Photo: Reuters
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adviser Ali Shamkhani said Tehran was “seeking a real and fair agreement,” adding that “important and implementable proposals are ready.”
If Washington showed goodwill, the path forward would be “smooth,” he said on social media platform X.
The format for the talks has not been confirmed, with the US calling them direct talks, but Iran insisting on an intermediary.
The delegations would start indirect negotiations after a meeting with Omani Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi, Iranian news agency Tasnim said.
The talks were expected to begin in the afternoon with Busaidi acting as an intermediary, Tasnim added.
Trump announced the talks during a White House press appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s arch-foe.
The contact between the two sides, who have not had diplomatic relations for decades, follows repeated threats of military action by the US and Israel.
Asked what would happen if the talks fail to produce a deal, Trump said: “If it requires military, we’re going to have military.”
SANCTIONS
Responding to Trump’s threat, Tehran said it could expel UN nuclear inspectors, a move that Washington warned would be an “escalation.”
Iran, weighed down by years of sanctions and weakened by Israel’s pummeling of its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, has strong incentives to negotiate.
The US wants to stop Iran from ever getting close to developing a nuclear bomb.
The 2015 deal that Trump withdrew from aimed to render it practically impossible for Iran to build an atomic bomb, while at the same time allowing it to pursue a civil nuclear program.
The UK, China, France, Russia and Germany were the other parties to the agreement, of which Araghchi was a key architect.
Witkoff told the Wall Street Journal that “our position today” starts with demanding that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear program — a view held by hardliners around Trump that few expect Iran would ever accept.
“That doesn’t mean, by the way, that at the margin we’re not going to find other ways to find compromise between the two countries,” Witkoff told the newspaper.
“Where our red line will be, there can’t be weaponization of your nuclear capability,” he said.
NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, stepped up its activities after Trump abandoned the 2015 agreement.
The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report cited “serious concern” that Iran had an estimated 274.8kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent, nearing the weapons grade of 90 percent.
Ali Vaez, an Iran specialist at the Crisis Group, a US-based think tank, said agreeing on the scope of the talks would be “one of the first and most consequential issues.”
“Iran does not want an expanded agenda in the early stages, but no deal will be sustainable unless it becomes more comprehensive,” he said.
Iran is “likely to engage on steps to roll back its nuclear program, but not dismantle it entirely” in exchange for sanctions relief, Vaez added.
REGIME SURVIVAL
Karim Bitar, a Middle East Studies lecturer at Sciences Po University in Paris, said negotiations “will not focus exclusively on... the nuclear program.”
“The deal would have to include Iran stopping its support to its regional allies,” a long-standing demand by US allies in the Gulf, he said.
For Iran, it could be a matter of the government’s very survival.
“The one and only priority is the survival of the regime, and ideally, to get some oxygen, some sanctions relief, to get their economy going again, because the regime has become quite unpopular,” Bitar said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS