A woman walking by a news kiosk in Tehran, where headlines mentioned the first round of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations held in Oman.
Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

What to Know About U.S. Talks With Iran Over Its Nuclear Program

The two sides held preliminary negotiations on Saturday, and an Iranian official said they would resume next week.

by · NY Times

Preliminary diplomatic talks between American and Iranian officials in Oman over Tehran’s nuclear program ended on Saturday with a handshake and with both sides describing them as constructive.

The next round of discussions, set for next Saturday, according to the officials, could lead to the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries under President Trump since he withdrew the United States from a landmark nuclear accord seven years ago.

Mr. Trump has often been bellicose about Iran, and has said that the country should not be allowed to acquire a nuclear bomb. The talks reflect his threats-and-wooing approach to foreign conflicts, one in which the possibility of a deal is almost always on the table and drawn-out military conflict is unappealing.

For Iran, the first round of talks with the United States went as well as could be expected. Iran can claim that two of its main conditions for taking the negotiations to the next level were achieved: Washington kept the focus on Iran’s nuclear program — at least for now — and did not mention the dismantling of its nuclear facilities or its regional policy with proxy militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

The talks were, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the matter, broad and aimed at maintaining a dialogue.

And so Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who is leading the discussions, did not suggest that Iran abandon its enrichment program entirely, the official said. Instead, the focus was on the country not weaponizing its existing material.

Mr. Witkoff has almost no foreign policy experience. But as a yearslong friend of Mr. Trump’s, he has the president’s trust, and the ability to be seen as speaking for him in a way other U.S. officials do not. He was joined this weekend by Ana Escrogima, the U.S. ambassador to Oman, for the preliminary talks with Abbas Araghchi, the Iran foreign minister, according to another White House official. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was not involved in Saturday’s talks.

In a statement, the official said that Mr. Witkoff had underscored to Mr. Araghchi that he had instructions from Mr. Trump to resolve the two nations’ differences through dialogue and diplomacy, if possible.

Mr. Araghchi and the White House official both said the talks between the two teams would resume next Saturday.

Speculation over whether the American and Iranian envoys would meet directly or indirectly was settled by doing both. The Iranian and U.S. teams sat in separate rooms for the duration of the two-and-a-half-hour negotiations, with the Omani foreign minister shuffling back and forth with written and oral messages. At the end, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Araghchi met in person for a brief greeting as they were leaving the compound, Iran’s foreign ministry said.

“There were no sharp words used,” Mr. Araghchi told Iranian state television. “Both sides showed commitment to take these talks forward until we reach a deal that is favorable to both sides.”

Prior to the meeting, he had said the goal was to build trust and to reach an agreement on the framework and timeline for negotiations on the nuclear program. Iran had indicated that if the United States put full dismantlement of its nuclear program on the table, it would walk away from the talks.

The talks began midafternoon in Muscat, the Omani capital, which American and Iranian diplomats have used as neutral negotiating territory for years.

The two sides came in with deep distrust, given that Mr. Trump walked away from the 2015 accord that Iran had brokered with the United States and other world powers, and then imposed harsh sanctions on Tehran during his first term.

Mr. Trump now wants to strike a deal — both to showcase his negotiating skills and to keep simmering tensions between Iran and Israel from escalating into a more intense conflict that would further roil the Middle East.

“I want Iran to be a wonderful, great, happy country, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters on Friday night aboard Air Force One.

Iranian officials were skeptical, but open to “a chance for an initial understanding that would mark a path for the negotiations,” Mr. Araghchi said on Saturday before the talks began.

The talks began after a contentious relationship between Mr. Trump and Iran during the 2024 presidential campaign. Last year, Iran-backed hackers targeted aides to Mr. Trump and President Joseph R. Biden Jr., officials said, succeeding with some Trump officials. Shortly after Election Day, the Justice Department announced charges against a man it said was involved in an Iranian plot to assassinate Mr. Trump. Iran denied there was such an effort.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump sent a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, saying he would rather find a way to forge a deal than escalate a military campaign. If such a deal could not be reached in the coming weeks, Mr. Trump said, Iran may face a miliary campaign against its facilities. Mr. Trump received a letter back saying the moment to talk had arrived.

The Iranian delegation had planned to convey that it was open to talking about scaling back uranium enrichment and allowing outside monitoring of its nuclear activity, according to two senior Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. But they said that the negotiators were not interested in discussing the dismantlement of the nuclear program, which some Trump administration officials, including Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, have insisted on and may push Mr. Trump to consider.

Mr. Witkoff, however, has publicly suggested a different so-called red line, telling The Wall Street Journal that such a marker would be the development of a nuclear weapon. He indicated that it would not be the enrichment program itself.

At issue is the dwindling power of the original nuclear deal, which European leaders have kept limping along since 2018, when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States. The deal’s most punishing restrictions expire in October.

Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and completed under President Barack Obama, the accord was the result of years of painstaking and technical negotiations that lifted international sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.

Only nine countries are known to have nuclear weapons, and adding Iran to the list could pose an existential threat to its main adversary, Israel, and other nations. Experts also have raised concerns that Iran could share its nuclear capabilities with terrorist groups.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear activities are legal and meant only for civilian purposes, like energy and medicine. But it has highly enriched uranium, beyond the levels necessary for civilian use, that can be used to make a nuclear warhead.

In the years since Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord, Iran has steadily accelerated uranium enrichment to the point where some experts estimate that it could soon build a nuclear weapon. Its economy has crumbled under American sanctions, and Mr. Trump this week imposed new measures targeting Iran’s oil trade.

Israel’s government worries that Iran will expand its nuclear program, and is pushing to destroy it.

“The deal with Iran is acceptable only if the nuclear sites are destroyed under U.S. supervision,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said this week. “Otherwise, the military option is the only choice.”

While Mr. Araghchi was closely involved in the earlier negotiations, Mr. Witkoff has little experience in the technical aspects of Iran’s program. He arrived in Oman after a visit on Friday to St. Petersburg for talks with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about a potential cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine.

Iran is likely to extend diplomatic talks for as long as possible — both to delay Israeli military action and to push past an Oct. 18 deadline when the U.N.’s authority to impose quick “snapback” sanctions on Iran expires.

“They have an opportunity to tie Israel and the United States in knots by getting into negotiations in which they dupe Witkoff into thinking that negotiations will produce a lot,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as Mr. Trump’s Iran envoy during his first term. “And so the negotiations start, which holds Israel off, and they continue, and they continue.”

A new deal could be reached pretty quickly, he said. But Iran would most likely commit to little more than what it agreed to in the 2015 accord. Such an outcome would irritate Israel.

The Trump administration also has deployed an extraordinary military buildup in the area, including two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 stealth bombers and fighter jets, as well as air defenses.

Yet Mr. Trump keenly wants to avoid a new war in the region, which his advisers have warned would siphon military resources away from other potential threats, like China, and detract from his efforts to avoid foreign entanglements.

Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group, said that the meeting on Saturday had been about format and scope, and that the two sides would soon delve into technical negotiations — the hard part of talks.

“This shows that Iran and the U.S. are likely on the same page with regards to the end game in these negotiations, and thus could be in the same room moving forward,” Mr. Vaez said. “If dismantling was the floor for the U.S. team, the ceiling would have collapsed on these negotiations.”

Adam Rasgon and Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

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