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01-03-2026
GENEVA: US and Iranian officials have made “significant progress” in high-stakes nuclear talks in Geneva, the Omani foreign minister has said but the chances of a deal that could avert a war remain unclear.
Badr Albusaidi, who acted as mediator, said the two sides planned to resume negotiations “soon” after consultations in their capitals, and technical-level discussions would take place next week in Vienna.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led his country’s delegation, said “good progress” had been made and while there had been agreement on some issues, differences remained on others.
He said the next round of negotiations would happen in a less than a week.
The prospect of further talks could reduce the possibility of President Donald Trump carrying out his threats to strike Iran.
Trump has ordered the largest US military build-up in the Middle East since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, while Iran has vowed to respond to an attack with force.
For decades, the US and Israel have accused Iran of trying to secretly develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly denied it is seeking a bomb and says its program is only for peaceful purposes, though the country is the only non-nuclear-armed state to have enriched uranium at near weapons-grade level.
According to Iranian state media, negotiators insisted that Iran had the right to peaceful nuclear energy and rejected US demands to completely stop the enrichment of uranium in Iranian territory and to transfer its stockpile of 400kg (880lb) of enriched uranium out of the country but officials are believed to have offered concessions, although the proposals have not been made public. One of the reported options was for Iran to be allowed to enrich uranium at a minimal level after a three-to-five-year suspension, under international monitoring.
In return for a deal, Araghchi told Iranian television that the negotiators demanded the lifting of sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.
Opponents of the regime say any relief would give the clerical rulers a lifeline.
The indirect talks happened in two sessions. One in the morning, that lasted three hours, and another, shorter, in the evening. There was no immediate US reaction on the outcome.
As in previous rounds, the US was represented by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Rafael Grossi, the head of the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also joined the negotiations. It remains unclear which conditions Trump could find acceptable for a deal, and the president has done little to explain why there could be the need to take military action now, eight months after the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities during a war between Israel and Iran.
Iran has already rejected discussing limits to the country’s ballistic missile program and ending its support for proxies in the region, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
In recent weeks, the US has sent thousands of troops and what Trump has described as an “armada” to the region, including two aircraft carriers along with other warships, as well as fighter jets and refueling aircraft.
Trump first threatened to bomb Iran last month as security forces brutally repressed anti-government protests, killing thousands of people but since then, his focus has turned to Iran’s nuclear program, which has been at the center of a long-running dispute with the West.
In his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, Trump briefly and vaguely talked about the tensions with Iran, without clearly laying out the case for strikes. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
