A short handshake may be the most likely outcome from preliminary diplomatic talks set on Saturday between US and Iranian officials.
Perhaps it’s enough to continue the debate, and could lead to the first formal face-to-face negotiations between the two countries since President Trump abandoned the groundbreaking nuclear deal seven years ago.
The talks scheduled to be held in Oman will serve as an emotional session to see if the Trump administration and Iranian administrative government can move to full negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump has high distrust, considering Iran left the 2015 deal that he mediated with the US and other world powers and slapped strict sanctions on Tehran during his first term.
Trump now wants to attack the deal. He hopes to show off his negotiation skills and that the fascinating tensions between Iran and Israel will escalate into a more intense conflict and prevent it from hitting the Middle East further. Iranian officials are skeptical, but “it’s full-fledged and ready to engage with a perspective to seal the deal,” Foreign Minister Abbas Aragci wrote in the Washington Post this week.
The goals for Saturday’s meeting were modest, reflecting the gap between the two sides. It’s about agreeing to the negotiation framework and timeline. It is not clear whether the envoy will speak directly, as Trump argued, or, as Aragucci has shown, will pass the message to Omani intermediaries returning and traveling between rooms.
The Iranian delegation will be making its open to talking about the possible reduction in enrichment and external surveillance, according to two Iranian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. But they said the negotiators were not interested in discussing the dismantling of the nuclear program, argued by Trump administration officials.
Experts predict that a handshake or another short encounter is a way to satisfy both sides and send good-willed gestures without direct negotiation.
Trump said Saturday’s talks, which are expected to take place on the seaside site, will depend on instinct to see if there is a possibility of further negotiations. “When you start a talk, you know if they’re doing well,” he said this week. “And I think the conclusion is when I think they’re not going well. It’s just a feeling.”
What is at risk?
What’s at issue is the original nuclear deal reduction power that European leaders have been slugging alongside since 2018 when Trump retracted the US before the most punishing restrictions expired in October.
Known as the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan, the agreement, completed under President Barack Obama, was the result of years of hard-working technical negotiations in which it agreed to lift international sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on the nuclear program.
With only nine countries in the world having nuclear weapons, adding Iran to the list could pose an existential threat to its major enemies, Israel, and perhaps other countries. Experts also raised concerns that Iran could potentially share its nuclear capabilities with terrorist groups.
For a long time, Iran has been legal in nuclear activities, not for weapons, but for civilian purposes such as energy and drugs. However, it concentrates uranium, an important component of nuclear bombs, beyond the level required for civilian use.
In the years since Trump withdrew from the deal, Iran steadily accelerated its uranium enrichment, until some experts estimated that it could soon build nuclear weapons. The economy collapsed under US sanctions, and this week Trump imposed new measures targeting Iran’s oil trade.
The Israeli government believes Tehran is pushing for it to expand and destroy its nuclear program.
“A contract with Iran will only be accepted if the nuclear presence is destroyed under US oversight,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week. “If not, military choice is your only option.”
Araghchi was closely involved in previous negotiations, but the expected US envoy, Steve Witkoff, has little experience with the technical aspects of Iranian programs. He was scheduled to arrive in Oman after visiting St. Petersburg on Friday, and after discussing the possibility of a ceasefire between President Vladimir V. Putin and Russia and Ukraine.
Iran will ensure that it will delay Israel’s military action and extend diplomatic consultations wherever possible, exceeding the deadline of October 18, when the UN’s authority to impose UN “snapback” sanctions expired.
“They have the opportunity to connect Israel with the United States, negotiate and get caught up in negotiations that make them think that negotiations will produce a lot,” said Elliot Abrams, Trump’s Iranian envoy in his first term. “So the negotiations begin, and it hinders Israel, they continue, they continue.”
The new deal “can be reached fairly quickly,” he said, but Iran will be slightly more committed than what it agreed in the 2015 agreement. Such outcomes will inspire Israel.
It may not be enough for Trump, who previously demanded a lot of restrictions on both Iranian missiles and Shiite agents in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, to claim that he had made a better deal than his Democratic predecessor.
Diplomacy or conflict?
Abrams predicted that Israel would eventually hit Iran anyway. Since at least last fall, Israel has been preparing highly accurate long-range missiles, including those that could hit underground targets due to air strikes in Iran.
The Trump administration also deployed exceptional military accumulation within range, including two aircraft carriers, an additional B-2 stealth bomber, fighter jets, and air defense.
But Trump wants to avoid a new war in the region. His advisors warn that he will siphon military resources from other potential threats like China and undermine his efforts to become president of peace.
“The president really doesn’t want to use the military here,” said Dana Stoll, the top Pentagon official for Middle East policy during the Biden administration.
Like the other recent ways that the president has dealt with Iran, she said, she appears to have thought that Trump “first chose to try the diplomatic track, thinking what the military campaign would look like and what it could actually be achieved.”
She said Trump plans to visit Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates soon next month. “What he hears from all the Arab leaders he’s talking about is that they don’t want more war,” she said.
Trump says he’s ready for the worst. “If that requires an army, we’re going to have an army,” he said Wednesday. Israel added: “It will obviously be its leader.”
Iran is also training itself. “Mark my words: Iran likes diplomacy, but knows how to protect itself,” Aragucci wrote. “We seek peace, but we never accept obedience.”
Farnaz Fassihi contributed a report.
