DUBAI:
The United States and Iran are to hold talks in Oman on Friday after Tehran requested a change of venue to limit talks to its nuclear program, a regional official said, with a build-up of US forces in the Middle East raising fears of a confrontation.
Iran wanted the meeting to take place in Oman as a continuation of previous rounds of talks held in the Gulf Arab country on its nuclear program and requested a change of location from Turkey to avoid any broadening of the discussions to topics such as Tehran’s ballistic missiles, the regional official said.
Iran has said it will not make concessions on its formidable ballistic missile program – one of the largest in the Middle East – calling it a red line in the talks. Tehran, which says it has been rebuilding its stockpile of ballistic missiles since coming under attack from Israel last year, has warned it will release its missiles to defend the Islamic Republic if its security is threatened.
The regional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iran had stressed from the beginning that it would only discuss its nuclear program, while Washington wanted other issues on the agenda.
Oil prices added to gains on Wednesday after the United States shot down an Iranian drone and armed Iranian boats approached a US flag in the Strait of Hormuz, reviving fears of an escalation between Washington and Tehran.
US President Donald Trump has warned that “bad things” were likely to happen if a deal could not be reached, increasing pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of airstrikes and raised fears of a wider war.
On Tuesday, the US military shot down an Iranian drone that was “aggressively” approaching the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, the US military said in an incident first reported by Reuters.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday: “We’re negotiating with them right now.” He did not elaborate and declined to say where he expected the talks to take place. A source familiar with the situation said Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was to attend the talks along with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.
Ministers from several other countries in the region including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were also expected to attend, but a regional source told Reuters that Tehran only wanted bilateral talks with the United States.
In June, the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in at the end of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. More recently, the US Navy has built up forces in the region following Iran’s violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest since Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene, has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran and sent a flotilla to the country’s coast. Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried that a US attack could break its grip on power by driving an already angry public back into the streets, according to six current and former Iranian officials.
The priority for diplomatic efforts is to avoid conflict and de-escalate tensions, a regional official told Reuters earlier.
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for the resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program and an end to its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable violations of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters that its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the biggest obstacle.
An Iranian official said there should be no preconditions for negotiations and that Iran was ready to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, which it says is for peaceful, not military, purposes. Since the US strikes in June, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work has stopped.
In another incident Tuesday, this one in the Strait of Hormuz, the US Central Command said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces had approached a US-flagged tanker at speed and threatened to board and seize it.
Maritime risk management group Vanguard said the Iranian boats ordered the tanker to stop its engine and prepare to be boarded. Instead, the tanker picked up speed and continued its voyage.
