April 12 (UPI) — The United States and Iran on Saturday began “indirect” negotiations on a new nuclear deal in the Gulf Arab nation of Oman.
Before the talks, both sides’ leaders issued warnings. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military strikes and Tehran warned any attack would put the United States into a broader conflict in the Middle East.
It was the first high-level talks between the two nations since 2018 when Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal during his first term as president.
Iran’s foreign ministry said the talks lasted for 2 1/2 hours and both sides agreed to continue them next week, Al Jazeera reported.
The negotiations were conducted “in a constructive atmosphere and based on mutual respect,” the ministry said.
The two sides were in separate rooms and gave their views to the mediator. But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff “spoke for several minutes in the presence of the Omani foreign minister [Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi] while leaving the negotiations venue,” Iran’s foreign ministry said.
Araghchi said he was seeking an “initial understanding” with the United States that could lead to a negotiations process upon arriving in the Omani capital Muscat.
“It is our intention to reach a fair and honorable agreement on equal standing,” he said, according to Iran’s state-run Tasnim News Agency.
He said it was “too early” to speak about a timetable for the talks and it depends on “sufficient will on both sides.”
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi mediated the “indirect talks” that began between Araghchi and Witkoff, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei posted on X.
“Iran’s diplomacy is at work with respect to regional peace and stability,” Baqaei said.
He added that Araghchi will be visiting Jordan, Egypt and Turkey “as part of our diplomatic reach-out to countries of the region to end genocide, atrocity and aggression.”
Baqaei told reporters the talks are “just a beginning” and Tehran did not “expect this round of talks to be very long.”
A member of Iran’s negotiating team told the state-run Iranian Tasnim news agency that the atmosphere has been positive and it was “unlikely that the negotiations will be extended into tomorrow.”
The United States didn’t confirm the talks began. Witkoff has wanted to meet face-to-face with Iran’s leaders.
Trump, aboard Air Force One en route to Florida on Friday night, said he has given Iran a two-month deadline for a deal that would reduce its nuclear stockpile or possibly eliminate it entirely.
“I want them not to have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be a wonderful, great, happy country, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
Last month, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, via the United Arab Emirates that he wants a deal to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to avert possible military strikes by the U.S. and Israel.
The Islamic Republic’s regional power situation has been significantly weakened over the past 18 months by Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and unprecedented attacks inside its borders.
“They are literally struggling to keep the lights on,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
Iran has said its “red lines” for the talks include “threatening” language, and “excessive demands” regarding Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s defense industry, according to Tasnim.
Tehran has a ballistic missile program.
Trump wants a “stronger” agreement than the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, which curbed Iran’s nuclear program. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, plus Germany and the European Union — signed a deal then known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Trump withdrew from the deal, calling it a “disastrous” agreement that gave money to a regime that sponsored terrorism.
While the international community largely does not want Iran to build a nuclear weapon, the country is allowed to have a civilian nuclear energy component under a United Nations treaty.
The Trump administration also wants to engage Iran on a broad range of issues, a senior administration official told CNN.
“Iran would be eager to jump back into something like JCPOA, so the question is: are they willing to put anything else on the table?” the official said.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters: “The very specific thing that needs to be accomplished, which would make the world a much safer place, is to make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”
Araghchi argued in an editorial on Tuesday in the Washington Post the United States likely would prefer to avoid war with Iran.
“We cannot imagine President Trump wanting to become another US president mired in a catastrophic war in the Middle East — a conflict that would quickly extend across the region and cost exponentially more than the trillions of taxpayer dollars that his predecessors burned in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he wrote.
The supreme leader’s adviser Ali Shamkhani has said Iran is “seeking a real and fair agreement” and “important and implementable proposals are ready. If Washington comes to the talks with sincere intentions and genuine will to reach an agreement, the path to a deal will be clear and smooth.”
Trump, during his meeting Monday with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, disclosed plans for the talks. He said they would be “very big,” but warned it would “be a very bad day for Iran” if they were unsuccessful.
Witkoff also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Friday.
