Talks to de-escalate Iran’s nuclear programme resumed in Geneva on Friday with western officials telling The National that the regime appeared “eager” to engage in discussions.
With Tehran still reeling from its proxy Hezbollah’s weakened status following the war in Lebanon, and from Israel’s air strikes last month, it appears that the new government under President Masoud Pezeshkian is keen to negotiate.
That will become even more urgent when US president-elect Donald Trump returns to office in January with Israeli security sources disclosing to The National that the country believes he will “sign off” an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
The prospect of a strike was part of “planning for a variety of scenarios,” a western official also said, adding that “Iran is feeling the pressure that ultimately a Trump presidency would potentially be very, very bad for them”.
The head of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, also stated on Friday that Iran's nuclear ambitions posed a major global security threat.
“Iran's allied militias across the Middle East have suffered serious blows,” Richard Moore said in a speech in Paris. “But the regime's nuclear ambitions continue to threaten all of us.”
While Iran widely publicised the meeting of its senior nuclear negotiator, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, with top diplomats from Britain, Germany and France, known as the E3, the western countries were surprised by the amplification of the conference.
“It’s the Iranians who have brought this to everybody's attention,” the western official said. “This is not necessarily something we were proactively briefing about and it’s the Iranians who frankly made it something more than it is.”
It is understood that Mr Pezeshkian’s new team is looking to reset its communications strategy with the West, although it is unclear how much support he will have from the dominant Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to draw down the nuclear programme.
Following the meeting a senior Iranian diplomat disclosed that more dialogue would occur “in the near future” adding that the discussions had been “candid”.
That concurred with the western official who disclosed that E3 officials would state Iran’s nuclear programme was “unacceptable and destabilising” and that the discussion would be “an opportunity for us to criticise them over their support for Russia's war in Ukraine”.
“We are very clear that what Iran is doing in support of Russia is a threat to European security,” he added.
But Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, who was also involved in the talks, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the country was “firmly committed to pursue the interests of our people and our preference is the path of dialogue and engagement”.
However, Mr Gharibabadi, following a meeting with EU diplomats in Geneva on Thursday, also argued that “Europe has failed to be a serious player” on the nuclear issue, after Mr Trump broke off the nuclear agreement in 2018 and unilaterally reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
He also urged the EU to “abandon its self-centred and irresponsible behaviour” on a range of issues including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
A Whitehall source stated that Friday’s meeting demonstrated that the E3 countries felt “we need to be able to continue to engage with Iran because when you sit down across the table they feel the pressure”.
But also by engaging with Iran they could draw them away from the broadly held view that the country was seen as a "malign influence" in the Middle East, he added.
