The US and Iran will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and American officials said on Monday, as President Donald Trump warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will meet in Istanbul in an effort to revive diplomacy over a long-running dispute about Iran's nuclear programme and dispel fears of a new regional war, Reuters reports, while a regional diplomat said representatives from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt would also participate.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday said he had instructed Mr Araghchi to carry out negotiations "provided that a suitable environment exists—one free from threats and unreasonable expectations."
Tension is running high amid a US naval build-up near Iran, following a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest domestic unrest in Iran since its 1979 revolution.
Mr Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded that Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking”, while Tehran's top security official Ali Larijani said arrangements for negotiations were under way.
Asked on Monday about the prospect of a deal, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House that talks were happening.
“We have ships heading to Iran right now, big ones – the biggest and the best – and we have talks going on with Iran and we'll see how it all works out … if we can work something out, that would be great and if we can't, probably bad things would happen.”
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for resumption of talks: Zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran's ballistic missile programme and ending its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long rejected all three demands as unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile programme, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.
Preparation for talks
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was considering “the various dimensions and aspects of the talks”, adding that “time is of the essence for Iran as it wants the lifting of unjust sanctions sooner”. Turkey and other regional allies have sought de-escalation.
Mr Witkoff who led the American negotiating team in talks with Iran last year, will arrive in Israel on Tuesday. Israel's military chief was reportedly in the US for high-level meetings on Iran over the weekend.
Mr Trump initially threatened to use military force against Iran as reports emerged of a crackdown on anti-government protests in the country last month. Activists outside the country put the death toll so far at about 6,500 people, most of them protesters. They are investigating reports of thousands more killings.
Mr Trump appeared to back down from the use of military force after receiving assurances that protesters would not be executed in Iran. The USS Abraham Lincoln strike group arrived in the Middle East in the middle of last week and renewed threats of action unless Iran return to negotiations over a nuclear deal were made.
On Friday, he said Iran does “want to make a deal”. Iran has taken a tough stance as the threat of US strikes looms, saying it would respond to a new US attack with “all-out war”.
With agencies
