Iran and the United States will hold more negotiations next week over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme, Iranian state television reported on Saturday at the end of the first round of talks between the two countries since president Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Iranian state TV also said US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi “briefly spoke in the presence of the Omani foreign minister” at the end of the talks, marking a direct interaction between the two nations locked in decades of tensions.
US officials did not immediately acknowledge the Iranian reports.
The two sides spoke for more than two hours at a location on the outskirts of Oman.
No overall agreement had been immediately likely from the initial talks, but the stakes could not be higher for these two nations closing in on half a century of enmity.
Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash air strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear programme if a deal is not reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.
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Signs of movement could help cool tensions in a region aflame since 2023 with wars in Gaza and Lebanon, missile fire between Iran and Israel, Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping and the overthrow of the government in Syria.
However, failure would aggravate fears of a wider conflagration across a region that exports much of the world’s oil. Tehran has cautioned neighbouring countries that have US bases that they would face “severe consequences” if they were involved in any US military attack on Iran.
Iran has always maintained its nuclear programme is intended for purely civilian purposes but Western countries believe it wants to build an atomic bomb.
They say Iran’s enrichment of uranium, a nuclear fuel source, has gone far beyond the requirements of a civilian programme and has produced stocks at a level of fissile purity close to those required in warheads.
Mr Trump, who has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term, reimposing crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Since then, Iran’s nuclear programme has leapt forward, including by enriching uranium to 60 per cent, a technical step from the levels needed for a bomb.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Thursday he hoped that the talks would lead to peace, adding: “We’ve been very clear what Iran is never going to have a nuclear weapon, and I think that’s what led to this meeting.”
Tehran responded the following day, saying it was giving the US a “genuine chance” despite what it called Washington’s “prevailing confrontational hoopla”.
Washington’s ally Israel, which regards Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat, has long threatened to attack Iran if diplomacy fails to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Tehran’s influence throughout the Middle East has been severely curbed, with its regional allies – known as the “Axis of Resistance” – either dismantled or badly hurt since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict in Gaza and the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December.
The axis includes not only Hamas but also Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shiite armed groups in Iraq and Syria. – Reuters, PA
