Plans to hold nuclear talks between the United States and Iran on Friday are back on track after several Arab leaders urgently pressed the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon not to follow through on threats to withdraw from the negotiations, two U.S. officials told Axios.
Axios reported that the talks will be held in the Sultanate of Oman, as insisted by Iran, despite the United States initially rejecting changes to the original plan to hold the meeting in Istanbul.
A U.S. official said: “They asked us to hold the meeting and listen to what the Iranians have to say. The Arabs told us that if they insisted, we would hold the meeting. But we are very skeptical.”
A second U.S. official explained that the Trump administration agreed to hold the meeting “out of respect” for U.S. allies in the region and “to keep the diplomatic track going.”
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced on Wednesday that the nuclear talks scheduled with the United States will take place in Muscat on Friday morning.
Iranian officials had said on Tuesday that they wanted to move the talks to Oman and conduct them bilaterally to ensure they focus solely on nuclear issues, rather than other matters such as missiles, which are among U.S. priorities.
On Wednesday, Trump said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should be “very worried,” as the United States reinforces its military presence in the region.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump said, “I can say that he should be very worried, yes, he should be. And as you know, they are negotiating with us.”
Referring to Trump’s repeated threats of military action, a senior official said at the time: “We want to reach a real agreement quickly, otherwise people will start looking at other options.”
Another U.S. official said: “We did not want to show flexibility here because if an agreement is reached, it has to be real. We did not want to return to the old way of doing things.”
Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Qatar on Thursday for talks on Iran with the prime minister, before heading to Oman to participate in the negotiations.
U.S. officials said that, given Iran’s behavior in recent days and the lack of any breakthrough in previous talks, they remain skeptical about the possibility of reaching an agreement.
