Patrick Wintour and Andrew Roth:
Iran’s foreign minister said late on Wednesday that the talks would proceed in Oman after reports of a last-minute effort by Arab states to convince the White House not to walk away from negotiations.
“Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10am Friday,” wrote the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. “I’m grateful to our Omani brothers for making all necessary arrangements.”
US officials have also indicated the talks in Oman will go forward. They will take place amid a massive buildup of US naval and airpower in the region and appear to be a last chance for Tehran to avert a US strike against the country’s leadership and nuclear programme.
The talks had collapsed earlier on Wednesday as Iran vowed they would be confined to its nuclear programme only. The US had demanded the talks also address Tehran’s ballistic missile programme, which Iran had ruled out.
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Ahead of the talks in Muscat, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Araghchi took to X on Friday morning and said that ‘Iran enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year.”
He went on to add: “We engage in good faith and stand firm on our rights. Commitments need to be honored. Equal standing, mutual respect and mutual interest are not rhetoric—they are a must and the pillars of a durable agreement.”
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the upcoming nuclear talks between senior US and Iranian officials taking place on Friday in Oman.
Earlier this week, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian announced that he had instructed his foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the US, which has in recent days built up a heavy military presence in the region, including an aircraft carrier strike group.
On Tuesday, the US military said that it had shot down an Iranian Shahed-139 drone after it “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. Despite the US military saying that it had shot the drone down “in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board,” Iran’s semi-official news agency Fars said the drone was on a “surveillance mission in international waters.”
With growing tensions between the US and Iran, particularly amid the recent anti-government protests where thousands are reported to have been killed by Iranian authorities, US president Donald Trump claimed last weekend the US “armada” near Iran was bigger than the taskforce deployed to topple Venezuela’s leader.
Trump added that he believes Iran wants to make a deal, saying: “If we do make a deal, that’s good. If we don’t make a deal, we’ll see what happens.”
Despite both sides signalling their readiness to negotiate, the agenda for Friday’s talks remains to be determined.
The US has requested the talks to be all-encompassing, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying on Wednesday: “That includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region. That includes the nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people.”
Meanwhile, Iran has insisted that it wants the talks to cover only nuclear issues.
We will bring you the latest, as it happens.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
