Iran has said repeatedly that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons and agreed to restrictions on enrichment in a 2015 deal that Trump ripped up during his first term in office.
Trump in June had said that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been “obliterated” after the United States joined a major Israeli bombing campaign.
The renewed pressure comes weeks after Iranian authorities killed thousands of people as they crushed one of the biggest threats to the Islamic republic established after the 1979 revolution deposed the pro-Western shah.
Trump said “nobody knows” if an attack would bring down the Iranian Government.
Rubio heads to Israel
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Israel for talks on Iran on Monday (Tuesday NZT), the State Department announced.
In a rare break from decades of precedent, the top US diplomat will travel without reporters on his plane.
Rubio will head to Israel even after the US embassy announced it was allowing non-emergency US government personnel and family members to leave “due to safety risks”.
Americans “may wish to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available”, the embassy said on its website.
Germany in a new advisory said it “urgently” discouraged travel to Israel.
Britain said it was moving diplomatic staff out of Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic hub where most countries maintain embassies, to another location in the country as a “precautionary measure”.
China, a main partner of Tehran, called on its citizens to evacuate Iran “as soon as possible”. The United States and European countries already have longstanding warnings on travel to Iran.
Holding out hope for talks
On February 19, Trump gave Iran 15 days to reach a deal. While Iran has insisted discussions focus solely on nuclear issues, Washington wants Tehran’s missile programme and its support for militant groups curtailed.
Oman, which brokered the negotiations in Iran that included Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and roving negotiator Steve Witkoff, has offered a positive take on the talks.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi met Friday in Washington with Vice-President JD Vance.
Busaidi wrote on X that he looked forward to “further and decisive progress in the coming days”.
“Peace is within our reach,” he wrote.
Iran has trumpeted what it calls progress during the negotiations.
But Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also sounded a warning on Friday in talks with his Egyptian counterpart, saying that “success in this path requires seriousness and realism from the other side and avoidance of any miscalculation and excessive demands”.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that it would hold technical discussions with Iran on Monday.
The agency called on Iran to co-operate with it “constructively”, stressing “the utmost urgency” of its request to verify all its nuclear material, according to a confidential report seen by AFP.
In their capital Tehran, ordinary Iranians expressed distrust of the United States and hoped negotiations would lead to economic relief for their sanctions-hit nation.
“Whatever the outcome of the negotiations... it should lead to some improvement in people’s economic situation. Not just a little – it is our right,” Ali Bagheri, 34, told AFP.
Hamid Beiranvand, 42, said Iran should “not give any concessions” as Washington “breaks promises”, but that “everyone prefers that a war doesn’t happen”.
- Agence France-Presse
