By Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee
Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump bets that Iran besieged is so vulnerable after 18 tumultuous months in the Middle East that he could finally be ready to abandon his nuclear program.
The renewed thrust to solve one of the most delicate foreign policy problems with which the White House is confronted and the Middle East will start seriously on Saturday when Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will meet in Oman.
Trump says he prefers a diplomatic solution, even if he warns that Iran will face a “great danger” if the talks do not go well. But Iran’s nuclear advances since Trump abandoned an agreement from the Obama era during his first mandate to make it difficult to seek an agreement to an agreement, and experts warn that the prospects for American military action on Iranian nuclear installations seem higher than they have been for years.
“I want Iran to be a wonderful, large and happy country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” said Trump on Friday evening on board the Air Force One when he flew to Florida for the weekend.
The moment is certainly heavy, but the White House sees signs full of hope that timing could be right. The push occurs while Iran has faced a series of huge setbacks which ostensibly left Tehran in a lower negotiation position.
The recent challenges of Iran
The military capacities of the proxy forces supported by Iran in Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been considerably degraded by Israeli forces. US air strikes, at the same time, targeting Houthi activists supported by Iran in Yemen, have struck oil refineries, airports and missile sites.
Israel also made strikes against Iran in October, which damaged the installations linked to the nuclear and ballistic missile programs in Tehran. And in December, Iran saw the Syrian chef Bashar Assad – the closest ally of the Middle East of Tehran – ousted after more than two decades of power.
The leaders of the Islamic Republic are also faced with internal pressures because years of international sanctions have stifled the economy. The US Treasury Department has announced a new series of sanctions earlier this week to target five entities and a person that US officials say key roles in the Iranian nuclear program.
“All eyes are on Oman by the Iranians following this very closely and potentially hoping that this would have an impact on the state of the economy,” said Negar Mortazavi, the main member of the Center for International Policy, a Washington -based reflection group.
But it remains to be seen if the United States can attract Iran with a carrot large enough to make concessions to respond to Trump’s requests that any potential agreement goes further to guarantee that Tehran does not develop nuclear weapons that the agreement forged during the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.
Under the 2015 nuclear agreement with the global powers, Iran could only maintain a small stock of uranium enriched at 3.67%. Today, he has enough to build several nuclear weapons if she chooses it and has material enriched up to 60%, a short technical step in arms quality levels.
It is not clear if the discussions will be face to face
During the meeting on Saturday in the capital of Oman, Muscat, Iran will be represented by Araghchi and the United States by Witkoff. We do not know if the two will speak directly.
Trump said the two parties have “direct” negotiations. But Iranian officials insisted that the plan is for “indirect talks”, which means that an Oman intermediary would give birth to messages between the teams of Witkoff and Araghchi locked up in different rooms.
In any case, the decision for both parties to speak – announced by Trump in the oval office this week alongside the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – was a bit of a surprise.
Trump called for direct talks while threatening “consequences” for Iran if that does not move to conclude an agreement.
Iran, on the other hand, has given mixed signals on the usefulness of talks, arguing that the commitment would be useless under the shadow of threats.
After Trump recently sent a letter to the Iranian supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, calling for direct negotiations, Tehran rejected the abolition while leaving the possibility of indirect negotiations.
President Masoud Pezeshkian again promised this week that “not after a nuclear bomb” from Iran and even suggested that Tehran could be open to the perspective of a direct American investment in the Islamic Republic if the countries could conclude an agreement.
It was a gap in Iran’s position after its 2015 nuclear contract, in which Tehran sought to buy American planes, but in fact prevented American companies from entering the country.
How much is there for negotiations?
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said Trump wanted the “complete dismantling” of the Iranian nuclear program, adding: “It is an enrichment, that is to say weapons, and it is its strategic missile program.”
But Trump left a bigger space for negotiations: “The only thing they cannot have is a nuclear weapon,” Trump told journalists by meeting his secretaries of the cabinet on Wednesday.
Witkoff has also reported that the administration could lend itself to an agreement that is not just the complete nuclear disarmament.
“Where our red line will be, there cannot be an armament of your nuclear capacity,” said Witkoff in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Friday.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu, who met Trump on Monday, said that he would host a diplomatic agreement in the sense of the agreement of Libya with the international community in 2003. The Israeli chief is known for his bellician opinions on Iran and, in the past, exhorted Washington to take military measures against Iran.
The agreement in Libya saw the late dictator Moammar Gaddafi abandon all his clandestine nuclear program. Iran insisted that its program, recognized at the International Atomic Energy Agency, should continue.
But Trump has not particularly adopted Netanyahu’s thrust for the Libya model, said Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, another Washington-based reflection group.
“If it is narrow, if it is focused on the nuclear program, if the United States’s objective is to prevent a nuclear weapon, there is a probability of success,” Parsi said. “And it is in these circumstances that I suspect that you will see talks, perhaps in a short time, to be raised.”
The writer Associated Press Jon Gambrell in Muscat, Oman, contributed to this report.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
