Iran and the United States have made “significant progress” in talks in Switzerland, mediators said, and have agreed to further discussions next week in Austria.
The Oman-mediated negotiations follow repeated threats from US President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Iran. A week ago, he gave Iran 15 days to reach a deal.
While Iran has insisted the discussions focus solely on its nuclear programme, the US wants to curtail the country’s missile programme and its support for militant groups in the region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV that the talks “made very good progress and entered into the elements of an agreement very seriously, both in the nuclear field and in the sanctions field”.
He said the next round would take place in “perhaps less than a week”, with technical talks at the United Nations’ nuclear agency to begin in Vienna on Monday.
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi also announced technical discussions were to be held next week in Vienna.
“We have finished the day after significant progress in the negotiation between the United States and Iran,” he said in a post on X.
The negotiations took place as the US continued its largest military buildup in the region in decades.
The US and Iranian delegations held a morning session at the Omani ambassador’s residence amid tight security, before pausing to hold consultations with their respective capitals.
A second session began later in the day.
Albusaidi said after the morning session that the two sides expressed “unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solutions”.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi joined the negotiations, a source close to the talks told AFP, with an Iranian state TV journalist also reporting that he was attending.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Trump’s negotiating team would demand that Iran dismantle its three main nuclear sites and hand over all its remaining enriched uranium to the US.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted before the talks that the Islamic republic was not “at all” seeking a nuclear weapon.
As part of the dramatic US build-up, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, which was sent to the Mediterranean this week, left a naval base in Crete yesterday, an AFP photographer said.
The US currently has more than a dozen warships around the Middle East and Persian Gulf: one aircraft carrier – the USS Abraham Lincoln – nine destroyers and three other combat ships.
It is rare for there to be two US aircraft carriers, which carry dozens of warplanes and are crewed by thousands of sailors, in the region.
The developments follow massive protests in Iran during which, rights groups say, thousands of demonstrators were killed.
In his State of the Union address earlier this week, Trump accused Iran of “pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions”, though Tehran has always insisted its programme is for civilian purposes.
Trump also claimed Tehran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America”.
The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims “big lies”.
The maximum range of Iran’s missiles is 2000km, according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed.
However, the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3000km – less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.
Trump’s State of the Union accusations in Congress were delivered in the same forum in which President George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Araghchi, who led the Iranian delegation at the talks, had called them “a historic opportunity”, adding that a deal was “within reach”.
The US was represented by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The two countries held talks earlier this month in Oman, then gathered for a second round in Geneva last week.
A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
In January, Tehran launched a mass crackdown on nationwide protests that posed one of the greatest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.
Protests have since resumed around Iranian universities.
Tehran residents who spoke to AFP were divided on what renewed conflict would mean for them.
“There would be famine, and people would suffer a lot. People are suffering now, but at least with war, our fate might be clear,” 60-year-old homemaker Tayebeh said.
- Agence France-Presse