US president Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States and Iran were beginning direct talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme, a surprise announcement after Iranian officials had appeared to rebuff US calls for such negotiations.
Iran had pushed back against Mr Trump’s demands that it directly negotiate over its nuclear programme or be bombed, though it had initially left the door open to indirect discussions.
“We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during talks with visiting Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable,” Mr Trump said. He declined to say where the talks would take place.
Warnings by Mr Trump of military action against Iran had increased tensions across the Middle East after open warfare in Gaza and Lebanon, military strikes on Yemen, a change of leadership in Syria and Israeli-Iranian exchanges of fire.
Mr Trump has said he would prefer a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme to a military confrontation and he said on March 7th he had written to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to suggest talks. Iranian officials said at the time that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations.
During his 2017-2021 term, Mr Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. Mr Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions.
Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.
Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy programme.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes.
Like US presidents before him, Mr Trump has said that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
He told reporters that Saturday’s talks with Iran would be at a very high level and he held out the possibility that a deal could be reached. “We have a very big meeting on Saturday and we’re dealing with them directly,” Trump said.
The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for details.
The shift comes at a precarious time for Tehran’s regional “Axis of Resistance” which it has established at great cost over decades to oppose Israel and US influence. The axis has been severely weakened since Palestinian group Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, tipped the Middle East into conflict.
Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon have been severely weakened by Israel since the Gaza war began while the Houthi movement in Yemen has been targeted by US air strikes since last month. Israel severely damaged Iran’s air defences last year.
The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, another key Iranian ally, has further weakened the Islamic Republic’s influence. – Reuters
