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The US and Iran have made “significant progress” in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program and will meet again, Oman’s foreign minister said at the conclusion of day-long talks between the two arch enemies in Geneva.
Oman’s Badr Albusaidi, who was brokering discussions between US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday evening that the talks “will resume soon after consultations in the respective capitals”.
“We ended the day having made significant progress,” he said on Twitter. Albusaidi said technical discussions would take place in Vienna next week.
The talks, which came after US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to attack Iran if it does not reach a deal, lasted longer than both rounds of talks held earlier this year.
There was no immediate comment from Washington or Tehran after the talks concluded. But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghai said earlier in the day that the meeting was “intense and serious.”
He said “important and practical initiatives” were taken regarding both Iran’s nuclear program and the removal of US sanctions, which Tehran says is essential for any durable and mutually acceptable agreement.
Oman’s Foreign Ministry said Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also took part in “consultations” on Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment goals have long been an obstacle to progress toward a deal. Witkoff said over the weekend that “zero enrichment” was an administration “red line.”
Iran has consistently rejected this condition, saying it has the right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear use as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fulfilling the demand is considered a danger line for the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Tehran has also expressed displeasure over US demands that talks simultaneously discuss Iran’s ballistic missiles – which it has used to retaliate against Israel and US military assets and allies in the region – and its support for regional terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that talks would be “largely focused on the nuclear program”. But he criticized Tehran for “refusing to talk to us or anyone about its ballistic missiles… It’s a big problem”.
Washington’s top diplomat said the Islamic Republic had “thousands of short-range ballistic missiles” that posed a threat to the US military and its bases and partners in the region.
Tehran also has naval assets that “threaten shipping and seek to intimidate the US Navy” and conventional weapons that “were designed to attack the US”, he said.
Rubio’s comments came a day after Trump accused Tehran of having “sinister” intentions over its nuclear program.
Rubio said, “The fact that they emphasize not only enrichment, but also enrichment and locations inside the mountains… You would be lacking common sense not to know what that means, or what it could mean.”
Trump claimed to have “destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program last year when the US briefly became involved in Israel’s 12-day war with the Islamic republic.
Rubio said Wednesday that Trump’s “priority” is to “make progress on the diplomatic front.”
“I wouldn’t characterize tomorrow (Thursday) as anything other than a set of negotiations,” Rubio said. “If you can’t even make progress on the nuclear program, it will be hard to make progress on ballistic missiles.”
Experts have struggled to assess the size of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal in the wake of last year’s 12-day war. Iran fired more than 500 medium- to long-range missiles at Israel during the conflict, and many were destroyed by Israeli strikes.
He said it was commendable that Iran’s short-range ballistic missile arsenal still numbered in the thousands, however, very few were used in combat.
Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Tehran’s “missile architecture is the backbone of Iran’s deterrent strategy”.
“At its core is an extensive missile and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) arsenal designed to compensate for conventional military weakness and deter its primary adversaries, that is, the United States and Israel,” Citrinowicz said.
Lynette Nussbacher, a former senior intelligence adviser to the UK Cabinet on the Middle East, said: Iran has “a lot of theater ballistic missiles – probably thousands – that could certainly be shot at US targets in the Persian Gulf region, and they have fast-strike anti-ship cruise missiles.”
Iran has threatened to escalate any conflict with the US in the event of a US attack – which has amassed its largest naval force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
A regime insider in Tehran told the FT that Iran has changed its strategy to one that aims to impose concrete costs on US forces and assets should a conflict erupt.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said: “I think there are some people in the regime and the Revolutionary Guards who think they made a mistake by not retaliating in a meaningful way during the June war” because it gave the appearance of weakness, he said.
Cartography by Steven Bernard
