{"id":133425,"date":"2025-04-12T13:16:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/iran-and-us-to-meet-for-nuclear-talks-but-little-obvious-prospect-of-success-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T13:16:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:16:32","slug":"iran-and-us-to-meet-for-nuclear-talks-but-little-obvious-prospect-of-success-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/iran-and-us-to-meet-for-nuclear-talks-but-little-obvious-prospect-of-success-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran and US to meet for nuclear talks but little obvious prospect of success – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tehran\u2019s nuclear program at stake in Oman after Trump\u2019s surprise announcement \u2013 can a breakthrough be reached?
Historical metaphor refers to them as \u201cNixon in China\u201d<\/a> moments: diplomatic encounters where leaders representing political systems implacably opposed to each other overcome their mistrust to achieve unexpected breakthroughs.
Yet few meetings can have held less obvious prospect of the success achieved by President Richard Nixon\u2019s historic 1972 visit to Beijing than that scheduled to take place in Oman on Saturday between representatives of the United States and Iran<\/a>.
The event took the international media by surprise when it was announced by Donald Trump<\/a> last Monday.
Ostensibly at stake is Iran\u2019s nuclear program, and western fears that the country\u2019s theocratic rulers could convert it into an atomic bomb.
Trump, sitting beside the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office, infused the matter with renewed urgency by warning that Iran would face dire consequences unless a deal could be reached.
\u201cI think if the talks aren\u2019t successful, Iran is going to be in great danger, because they can\u2019t have a nuclear weapon,\u201d he said.
The air of diplomacy backed by threat was reiterated by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday. \u201cThe ultimate objective is to ensure that Iran can never attain a nuclear weapon \u2026 All options are on the table and Iran has a choice to make: you can agree to President Trump\u2019s demand or there will be all hell to pay,\u201d she said.
It seemed an inauspicious way to attempt to surmount two generations of suspicion between two countries since Jimmy Carter severed diplomatic ties in 1980 after Islamic revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran<\/a> and held 53 Americans hostage for more than a year.
Compounding that obstacle is the fact that the two sides have given contradictory definitions of format for the talks.
While Trump has said the contacts will be \u201cdirect\u201d, Iran insists they will be \u201cindirect\u201d, implying that communications will take place through an unspecified intermediary.
Analysts and veteran diplomats say that difference could portend bigger disagreements, precluding the chance of success, which one veteran US diplomat estimated at ranging from \u201czero to none\u201d.
\u201cIt indicates that serious people are not running the show, because one of the first things you do is you agree on things like commenting on the format and what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d said Dennis Jett, a former US ambassador, international relations professor and author of a book about the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran<\/a>, which was signed by Barack Obama but abandoned by Trump during his first presidency.
\u201cSo if you can\u2019t even agree if it\u2019s direct or indirect \u2026 if it\u2019s indirect, it\u2019s a lot harder obviously.\u201d
Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, leading the Iranian delegation, is one of Iran\u2019s most experienced diplomats who was closely involved in the negotiations that underpinned the 2015 deal, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA).
By contrast, the US team will be led by Steve Witkoff, Trump\u2019s special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff, a billionaire hotel developer<\/a> from the Bronx, has the president\u2019s ear and trust \u2013 but has no experience of Iran or its often complex negotiating culture.
That knowledge gap could exacerbate an already yawning gulf in understanding between the two countries.
\u201cWe don\u2019t understand the Iranians, and I\u2019m not sure how well the Iranians understand the American political system \u2013 particularly today,\u201d said Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council of Foreign Relations.
\u201cWe are dealing with a very complicated relationship without an understanding of the other side.\u201d
Fueling the mutual ignorance, Takeyh argued, has been 45 years of diplomatic non-contact.
\u201cWe collectively in the United States simply do not understand the Iranian regime,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t understand how it works. We don\u2019t understand is the personalities and the motivation of the actors that are involved, in my opinion, we are fundamentally ignorant of the inner workings of the Iranian regime.\u201d
Further complicating things are the two sides\u2019 diverging goals.
For Iran, a primary aim is relief from years of western sanctions that have left the economy creaking, while keeping intact the nuclear program that the country\u2019s leaders insist is merely for civil energy purposes.
\u201cFirst and foremost, the Iranian aim is to protect their nuclear infrastructure from military attack, and the best way to do that is to launch a negotiating process,\u201d said Takeyh.
US aims are harder to discern. Netanyahu has called on the US to press for the \u201cLibyan option\u201d \u2013 so-called after an agreement reached with Libya\u2019s former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and meaning the total dismantlement of the uranium enrichment capacity.
For Iran that goal is an almost certain non-starter \u2013 all the more so given the eventual fate of Gaddafi, who was later ousted from power and killed by rebels.
Just as unpalatable are objectives cited by Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, who has talked about ending Iran\u2019s support for regional proxies like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group, and the Houthis in Yemen, against whom the Trump administration has recently launched military strikes.
But Waltz appears to have lost influence<\/a> in the White House after the recent \u2018Signalgate\u201d fiasco \u2013 in which he inadvertently invited a journalist into a chat group to discuss the Houthi strikes \u2013 while Witkoff has struck a more conciliatory pose, according to Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
\u201cHe does seem like a more pragmatic person\u201d said Toossi, citing a recent interview Witkoff gave in which he mentioned a possible agreement with Iran. \u201cHe talked about the deal that would center on verifying Iran\u2019s nuclear program is peaceful.
\u201cAnd he does seem to speak with the authority of Trump. I do not think that the Iranians would have agreed to a high-level meeting with Witkoff in Oman like this if they don\u2019t already have some kind of clarity that this isn\u2019t going to be a very one-sided negotiation.\u201d
That would include assurances that the US side is not seeking regime change \u2013 a goal articulated by high-level foreign policy aides in Trump\u2019s previous administration, but which the president has shown signs of having renounced.
Witkoff signalled flexibility in the US stance in eve-of-talks remarks to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, identifying Washington\u2019s \u201cred line\u201d as \u201cweaponisation\u201d.
\u201cI think our position begins with dismantlement of your program. That is our position today,\u201d he said, describing what he would tell Iranian officials. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean, by the way, that at the margin we\u2019re not going to find other ways to find compromise between the two countries.
\u201cWhere our red line will be, there can\u2019t be weaponization of your nuclear capability.\u201d
Yet at the core of the Iranians\u2019 sudden openness to engagement \u2013 conspicuously absent in the four years of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, despite repeated overtures \u2013 are feelings of fear and uncertainty over Trump himself.
During his first presidency, Trump ordered the killing of Qassem Suleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps\u2019 elite Quds unit, bringing the two countries to the brink of war.
\u201cThere is a fear factor that propels them forward. But it works both ways. On the one hand, there\u2019s a fear of what he might do. On the other hand, there\u2019s concern about his reliability as an interlocutor,\u201d said Takeyh.
But, said Toossi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran\u2019s supreme leader, is now dangling a carrot that Trump \u2013 with his famously transactional worldview \u2013 might be expected to grasp: the prospect of US commercial ties with Iran.
\u201cIran is in a dire economic situation, with US economic sanctions and its currency continuing to deteriorate. It really needs foreign investment to update its infrastructure,\u201d wrote Araghchi in a Washington Post article<\/a> this week
\u201cTrump, in a way, presents an opportunity for Iran in that they view any deal he would strike as more lasting, potentially, if they can get him to agree on something.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tehran\u2019s nuclear program at stake in Oman after Trump\u2019s surprise announcement \u2013 can a breakthrough be reached?Historical metaphor refers to them as \u201cNixon in China\u201d moments: diplomatic encounters where leaders representing political systems implacably opposed to each other overcome their mistrust to achieve unexpected breakthroughs.Yet few meetings can have held less obvious prospect of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}