Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said of Saturday’s talks about Iran’s nuclear program, ‘It is as much an opportunity as it is a test.’
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said talks with the United States about Tehran’s nuclear program, due to take place in Oman on Saturday, will be an “opportunity.”
Writing on the social platform X, currently banned in Iran, Araghchi wrote: “Iran and the United States will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect high-level talks. It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”
On Monday, President Donald Trump said the talks would be direct, and that the Iranians would be in “great danger” if the negotiations failed to persuade them to drop their nuclear weapons program.
Speaking to reporters after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump said Iran would not be getting nuclear weapons.
He said, “We’re dealing with them directly and maybe a deal is going to be made.”
Trump added, “doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious.”
‘Very Bad Day for Iran’
Asked about the possibility of military action against Iran if the talks broke down, Trump said: “Iran is going to be in great danger, and I hate to say it. If the talks aren’t successful, I think it’s going to be a very bad day for Iran.”
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Last month Trump said, “If they [the Iranians] don’t make a deal, there will be bombing.” He told NBC News in a March 30 telephone interview: “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before. There’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
In response to those comments, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview with International Affairs, a Russian political journal, a U.S. attack on Iran would have a “catastrophic” effect on the Middle East.
On March 5, the Kremlin offered to mediate between Iran and the United States to avoid a military confrontation between the two countries.
Moscow and Tehran are political and military allies and Iran has supplied thousands of Shahed drones for use by Russia in the Ukraine conflict.
Last month Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, calling for direct negotiations.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian later said Iran had rejected Trump’s entreaty, but he left open the idea of indirect negotiations with Washington.
On Saturday negotiators from Iran and the United States will be in Oman but the format of the talks remains cloaked in secrecy.
Libya-Style Deal Floated
Israel—Iran’s main military adversary in the Middle East—is a close ally of the United States, and Netanyahu has said he supports a deal similar to the one made with Libya in 2003, in which Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons program.
Netanyahu said this week: “I think that would be a good thing. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”
President Donald Trump, (L), gestures as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) leaves the West Wing of the White House, on April 7, 2025, in Washington. Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The Tehran regime has always denied it is trying to produce nuclear weapons, but in Nov. 2024 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) condemned Iran for the second time in five months for failing to cooperate fully with the agency’s inspectors monitoring its nuclear program.
In a report published on Nov. 19, the IAEA said the Iranian regime had amassed a stockpile of enriched uranium that was more than 32 times the limit set by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.
In Nov. 2024 Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the IAEA, told The Epoch Times, Iran might not even need to test weapons before using them and added, “They have enough material for half a dozen, or 10, nuclear weapons.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Tuesday, Iran could expect even tighter sanctions if it did not reach an agreement on abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
In an interview with CNBC, he said, “Absolutely, I would expect very tight, sanctions on Iran, and hopefully drive them to abandon their nuclear program.”
Wright is embarking, on Wednesday, on a tour of the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
