Iranian and American delegations completed a fifth conversations in Rome on Friday and signs of some limited progress emerged in the negotiations aimed at resolving a decades of dispute about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Although both Washington and Tehran take a difficult attitude in public prior to the discussions on Iran’s uranium enrichment, the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that there was potential for progress after Oman had made various proposals during the conversations.
“We have just completed one of the most professional rounds of conversations … We have said Iran’s position firmly … The fact that we are now on a reasonable path, in my opinion, is a sign of progress,” Araghchi told State TV.
“The proposals and solutions will be assessed in respective capitals … and the next round of conversations will be planned accordingly.”
A high American officer said the conversations lasted more than two hours and were both directly and indirectly with Omani mediators.
“The conversations remain constructive – we have made further progress, but there is still work to do. Both parties agreed to meet again in the near future. We are grateful to our Omani partners for their continuous facilitation,” said the civil servant.
The deployment is high for both parties. President Donald Trump wants Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that can cause a regional nuclear arms race and perhaps threaten Israel. The Islamic Republic wants to get rid of devastating sanctions about her on oil -based economy.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Albusaidi of Omani said on X the conversations between Araghchi and Trump’s Midden -Oost -envoy Steve Witkoff “with some but no convincing progress”.
Prior to the conversations, Araghchi wrote on X: “Zero nuclear weapons = We have a deal. Zero -enrichment = We have no deal. Time to decide.”
Among the remaining stumbling blocks are Tehran’s refusal to send its entire stock very enriched uranium abroad – possible raw material for nuclear bombs – or have discussions about the ballistic rocket program.
Diplomats have said that achieving a concrete deal would be technically impossible before the summer in view of the complexity of an agreement. In the meantime, a senior Iranian official who is involved in nuclear conversations with the US said, “if Washington drops his requirement of ‘Zero Enrichment’, a political agreement is feasible.”
The American State Secretary Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Washington worked to reach an agreement with which Iran could have a civil nuclear energy program but would not enrich an uranium, while he acknowledges that this will “not be easy”.
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word about the state, rejected the requirements to stop refining uranium as “excessive and outrageous”, and warned that such conversations probably did not produce any results.
Iran says it is ready to accept some limits for enrichment, but needs waterproof guarantees that Washington would not decrease on a future nuclear agreement.
In his first term in 2018, Trump dumped a Nuclear Pact of 2015 between big powers and Iran. Since he returns to the office this year, he has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran and inpuilden radical American sanctions that continue to bump the Iranian economy.
Iran responded through escalating enrichment far beyond the limits of the PACT 2015.
Wendy Sherman, a former American bidding secretary who led the American negotiating team that reached the 2015 agreement, said earlier that Tehran presents enrichment as a matter of sovereignty.
“I don’t think it is possible to get a deal with Iran where they literally dismantle their program, give up their enrichment, although that would be ideal,” she told Reuters.
The costs of failure of the conversations can be high. Iran’s Arch-Foe Israel regards Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat and says that it never allows the administrative establishment to obtain nuclear weapons. Tehran says it does not have such ambitions and the purposes are pure citizen.
The Minister of Strategic Affairs of Israel and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Mossad, would also be in Rome for discussions with the American negotiators, a source that was aware of the matter told Reuters.
Araghchi said on Thursday that Washington would bear the legal responsibility if Israel would attack Iranian nuclear installations, after a CNN report that Israel may prepare strikes.
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