Iran-US talks in Oman updates: Discussions to continue next week – Tehran

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We’ll be closing this live page soon, so let’s bring you up to speed with today’s main developments:

• Indirect talks between Iranian and US delegations in Oman have wrapped up, with Iran’s Foreign Ministry calling the discussions “constructive”.
• The negotiations lasted for about two and half hours, and both sides have agreed that talks will continue next week, it added.
• The ministry also said the heads of both negotiating teams spoke briefly face-to-face after the conclusion of the talks.
• Oman said it mediated to begin a process of “negotiations with the shared aim of concluding a fair and binding agreement”.

Speaking to state television, the Iranian foreign minister said that “about four rounds of exchanges of messages” between the two delegations took place.

“I think this first session was constructive. It was held in a calm and very respectful environment, and no inappropriate language was used. Both sides showed their commitment to advancing the talks towards reaching a desirable agreement,” Abbas Araghchi said.

He expressed hope that in the second round of talks, likely to take place next Saturday, the two sides will “enter discussions on the general frameworks that a potential agreement could include”.

Araghchi said the US delegation “made significant efforts today to show their will to reach a fair and appropriate agreement. We will evaluate this round of talks at various levels and prepare ourselves for the next round.”

We have some comments by Abbas Araghchi following the conclusion of the talks in Muscat.

In comments made to state television, the Iranian foreign minister said the second round of talks with will “probably take place” a week from now.

Araghchi noted the location of talks may not be in Oman, but added they will still take place under Omani intermediation.

“None of the parties are looking for fruitless talks, for talks that are time-wasting,” Araghchi said.

There hasn’t been any comment yet from the US side on the conclusion of the talks in Oman.

As we’ve reported, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said the indirect discussions lasted about two and a half hours. After that, Araghchi and Witkoff “briefly spoke in the presence of the Omani Foreign Minister”, it added.

The US president struck a rather upbeat, deal-making mode in comments to reporters yesterday saying he wants Iran to flourish but that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Trump also said that he’d use his own instinct to determine when to end these talks.

Of course the challenge before Trump is that he was the one who unilaterally took the US out of the previous nuclear deal with Iran and now wants to negotiate a new deal.

Previously he’d said he wanted more concessions from Iran so that he can then go back to the American voter to say that he got a better deal than his predecessor, Barack Obama, had achieved.

So the US has been looking for concessions from Iran in the form of more limits to its missile programme, as well as limits on how it’s funding its proxies.

But really, whether or not Trump will stick with this sort of upbeat mode remains to be seen because depending on the day, he has gone back and forth in public statements between wanting to strike a deal with Iran or even advocating for US military strikes against Iran.

The US has had a military build-up in the region, sending two aircraft carriers within range. There are stealth bombers there, too.

We also know that there are tensions even among his advisers, with some pulling for a more forceful military response to Iran – of course, he’s being pitched by Israel to do that, as well. And there’s also Trump’s urge to make a deal and be the peacemaking president that he so much wants his voters to believe him to be.

A potential agreement with the US to lift at least some of its harsh sanctions would bring economic opportunities for Iran.

But knowing Trump – and his envoy Steve Witkoff – are businessmen who like investment opportunities, senior Iranian officials have also been signalling unprecedented openness on that front before the talks.

In stunning remarks on Wednesday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not opposed to US entities investing in the Iranian economy.

Instead, he said Tehran is only concerned about spies infiltrating the country in the guise of investors.

“Iran is not the place for a group of individuals to come and conspire to destroy the country, to collect information and then assassinate the people about whom they have collected information,” he said.

Days earlier, Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to the supreme leader, described Trump as a “talented person who has become so rich in his business”.

“America can define economic interests with Iran,” he said in comments aired on national television.

The endless waves of US sanctions imposed since Trump left the nuclear deal in May 2018 have battered the Iranian economy and made Iranians considerably poorer.

Inflation has persistently stood at more than 30 percent – and at intervals above 60 percent – in the past few years, with the national currency constantly freefalling.

Each US dollar fetched less than 40,000 rials before Trump torpedoed the deal, but that rate stands at about 1 million rials per greenback at the moment.

All sectors of the Iranian economy are affected by the sanctions, as Iran has been cut off from the international payment system and the US secondary sanctions threaten any person or entity choosing to engage with Iran.

Even imports of medicine and medical equipment have not been spared. The US only intensified its sanctions as Iran experienced the deadliest COVID-19 pandemic of the Middle East.

Iranians are banned from most international services, including software and cloud platforms, web services such as education and online learning businesses, freelance work services, and even gaming platforms.

Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani has said Iran’s willingness to sit at the negotiating table “means precise dialogue, without ruckus”.

“Every message, first written and clear; without theatrics, without anything on the sidelines,” she said on X.

This should put an end to the “unsubstantiated” narrative pushed forward by those who oppose the negotiations, Mohajerani said, adding that Iran has chosen today the path for “diplomatic rationality”.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adviser Ali Shamkhani has said Tehran is “seeking a real and fair agreement”, adding that “important and implementable proposals are ready.

“If Washington comes to the talks with sincere intentions and genuine will to reach an agreement, the path to a deal will be clear and smooth,” Shamkhani added.

Meanwhile, an Iranian official quoted by Reuters said Khamenei, who has the final say on all key Iranian policies, has given Araghchi “full authority” for the talks in Oman.

“The duration of the talks, which will only be about the nuclear issue, will depend on the US side’s seriousness and goodwill,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

Iran has ruled out negotiating its defence capabilities such as its ballistic missile programme.

There’s not a lot of information and visibility on what is going on behind closed doors in Muscat.

But Al Jazeera has learned from a source close to the negotiations that both sides were asked to produce a position paper, laying out the areas they think are important for the discussion and their red lines – the things that cannot be discussed and must not be crossed.

Those two papers will then be swapped, so they’ll each get to see the other side’s key position on this.

The Iranian side has said these talks must be limited to the nuclear issue.

The other thing that we understand relates to the issue of whether these talks will be direct or indirect, with the Omanis going from room to room and speaking with either side.

Our understanding from the source is that the Iranian side does not have instructions from Tehran to have direct meetings.

This is a similar situation to when in 2015 then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif would take instructions from Tehran where many people, notably the supreme leader, needed to keep an eye on exactly what was going on in these talks, as they did previously in Geneva and Vienna.