What to Know About U.S. Talks With Iran Over Its Nuclear Program
Preliminary diplomatic talks between American and Iranian officials over Tehran’s nuclear program ended on Saturday with a senior Iranian official calling them “positive” and saying they would resume next week.
Depending on what comes next, they could lead to the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries since President Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear accord seven years ago.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said just after 10:15 a.m. Eastern on Saturday that the indirect talks had concluded. Iran’s official media said that the talks had been “constructive and positive, and based on mutual respect,” and had included a discussion of the nuclear program. They are set to resume on April 19, he said.
A statement from Iran’s foreign ministry said that Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy leading the administration’s effort, and Mr. Araghchi had met in person for a few minutes as they were leaving the compound.
Mr. Araghchi said going into the meeting that the goal of the talks today had been to build trust and to reach an agreement on the framework and timeline for negotiations on the nuclear program. Iran had indicated that if the United States put full dismantlement of its nuclear program on the table, it would walk away from the talks.
A U.S. official did not immediately respond to questions about what terms the Trump administration representatives had discussed.
The talks, in the Gulf nation of Oman, were a feeling-out session to see whether the Trump administration and Iran’s clerical leaders could move to full negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear activities.
The Iranian state news media reported that the talks began midafternoon in Muscat, the Omani capital, which American and Iranian diplomats have used as neutral negotiating territory for years.
The two sides came in with deep distrust, given that Mr. Trump walked away from the 2015 accord that Iran had brokered with the United States and other world powers, and then imposed harsh sanctions on Tehran during his first term.
Mr. Trump now wants to strike a deal — both to showcase his negotiating skills and to keep simmering tensions between Iran and Israel from escalating into a more intense conflict that would further roil the Middle East.
“I want Iran to be a wonderful, great, happy country, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters on Friday night aboard Air Force One.
Iranian officials were skeptical, but open to “a chance for an initial understanding that would mark a path for the negotiations,” Mr. Araghchi said on Saturday before the talks began.
The talks began during the 2024 presidential campaign, when Iran-backed hackers targeted aides to Mr. Trump and President Joseph R. Biden Jr., officials said, succeeding with some Trump officials. Shortly after Election Day, the Justice Department announced charges against a man involved in an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Mr. Trump.
The goals of Saturday’s meeting were modest, reflecting the gap between the two sides: to agree on a framework for negotiations and a timeline.
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, met separately with Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Witkoff to outline the format for the talks. The Iranian delegation had planned to convey that it is open to talking about scaling back uranium enrichment and allowing outside monitoring of its nuclear activity, according to two senior Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. They said the negotiators were not interested in discussing dismantlement of the nuclear program, which some Trump administration officials, including Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, have publicly insisted on.
Mr. Witkoff, however, has suggested a different so-called red line, telling The Wall Street Journal that such a marker would be the development of a nuclear weapon and indicating it would not be the enrichment program itself.
What’s at stake?
At issue is the dwindling power of the original nuclear deal — which European leaders have kept limping along since 2018, when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States. The deal’s most punishing restrictions expire in October.
Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and completed under President Barack Obama, the accord was the result of years of painstaking and technical negotiations that agreed to lift international sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.
Only nine countries are known to have nuclear weapons, and adding Iran to the list could pose an existential threat to its main adversary, Israel, and other nations. Experts also have raised concerns that Iran could share its nuclear capabilities with terrorist groups.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear activities are legal and meant only for civilian purposes, like energy and medicine. But it has highly enriched uranium, beyond the levels necessary for civilian use, which can be used to make a nuclear warhead.
In the years since Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord, Iran has steadily accelerated uranium enrichment to the point where some experts estimate that it could soon build a nuclear weapon. Its economy has crumbled under American sanctions, and Mr. Trump this week imposed new measures targeting Iran’s oil trade.
Israel’s government worries that Iran will expand its nuclear program and is pushing to destroy it.
“The deal with Iran is acceptable only if the nuclear sites are destroyed under U.S. supervision,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said this week. “Otherwise, the military option is the only choice.”
While Mr. Araghchi was closely involved in the earlier negotiations, Mr. Witkoff has little experience in the technical aspects of Iran’s program. He arrived in Oman after a visit on Friday to St. Petersburg for talks with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about a potential cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. What Mr. Witkoff, a close friend of Mr. Trump’s, does have is the president’s trust, and the ability to be seen as speaking for him in a way other U.S. officials do not.
Iran will all but certainly extend diplomatic talks for as long as possible — both to delay Israeli military action and to push past an Oct. 18 deadline when the United Nations’ authority to impose quick “snapback” sanctions on Iran expires.
“They have an opportunity to tie Israel and the United States in knots by getting into negotiations in which they dupe Witkoff into thinking that negotiations will produce a lot,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as Mr. Trump’s Iran envoy during his first term. “And so the negotiations start, which holds Israel off, and they continue, and they continue.”
A new deal could be reached pretty quickly, he said, but Iran would most likely commit to little more than what it agreed to in the 2015 accord. Such an outcome would irritate Israel.
It also might not be enough for Mr. Trump, who previously demanded more limits both on Iran’s missile development and its proxy forces in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, so he can claim to have struck a better deal than his Democratic predecessors.
On Saturday, the Iranian state news media said that efforts to negotiate aspects of Iran’s defense and military capabilities, regional presence or other domestic issues would mean the negotiations “will end much quicker.”
Diplomacy or conflict?
Mr. Abrams predicted that Israel would eventually strike Iran anyway. Since at least last fall, Israel has been preparing highly precise long-range missiles, including ones that can hit underground targets, for an airstrike on Iran.
The Trump administration also has deployed an extraordinary military buildup in range, including two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 stealth bombers and fighter jets, as well as air defenses.
Yet Mr. Trump keenly wants to avoid a new war in the region, which his advisers have warned would siphon military resources away from other potential threats, like China, and detract from his efforts to be a president of peace.
Still, Mr. Trump has said he is prepared for the worst.
“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” he said on Wednesday, adding that Israel would “obviously be the leader of that.”
Iran is also steeling itself.
“Mark my words: Iran prefers diplomacy, but it knows how to defend itself,” Mr. Araghchi said recently. “We seek peace, but will never accept submission.”
Adam Rasgon and Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
