Iran and United States delegations resumed negotiations on Friday to resolve a decades dispute over the Tehran nuclear program. Conversations take place in Rome, Italy.
There is a lot at stake for both sides. American President Donald Trump wants to restrict Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race and perhaps threaten Israel. The Islamic Republic, in turn, wants the end of sanctions on its oil -based economy.
Iranian Foreign Minister Araqchi, and Trump’s envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff lead a fifth round of negotiations through Omanese mediators.
“This round of negotiations is especially delicate … We need to see what issues will be raised by the other part … and based on that, we will continue with our positions,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told Rome state TV.
Both Washington and Tehran took a harsh public position on Iran’s uranium enrichment intensification program, which could potentially give the country space to build a nuclear warhead. Nevertheless, Tehran says he has no such ambitions and that the purposes are purely civilians.
Iran insists that negotiations are indirect, but US officials said the discussions – including the last round on May 11 in Oman – were “direct and indirect.”
Before the negotiations, Araqchi wrote on social network X: “… zero nuclear weapons = we have an agreement. Zero enrichment = We don’t have a deal. Time to decide.”
White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Trump believes the negotiations with Iran are “going in the right direction.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Washington was working to reach an agreement that would allow Iran to have a civil nuclear power program, but not enrich uranium, although he admitted that this “will not be easy.”
Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on state issues, rejected the requirements to interrupt uranium refining, considering them “excessive and outrageous”, warning that such negotiations would probably not produce results.
Among the remaining obstacles is Tehran’s refusal to send abroad all his highly enriched uranium stock-possible raw material for nuclear bombs-or getting involved in discussions about his ballistic missile program, which could transport warheads over long distances.
Iran says it is ready to accept some limits on enrichment, but it needs unmistakable guarantees that Washington will not deny a future nuclear agreement.
Tensions between countries
In his first term, in 2018, Trump abandoned a nuclear pact of 2015 between the main powers and Iran. Since returning to power this year, he has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign about Tehran and re -enhanced US sanctions that continue to harm the Iranian economy.
Iran responded by increasing enrichment far beyond the boundaries of the 2015 pact.
Wendy Sherman, a former US Supplier who led the US trading team that arrived at the 2015 agreement, noted that Tehran has enrichment as a matter of sovereignty.
“I don’t think it is possible to close an agreement with Iran where they literally dismantle their program, give up their enrichment, even if that was ideal,” she told Reuters.
The cost of failure of negotiations can be high. Israel, Iran’s Archi-Infigo, sees the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat and claims that it would never allow the clerical establishment to obtain nuclear weapons.
The Minister of Strategic Affairs of Israel and the head of the Mossad Foreign Intelligence Service will also be in Rome for conversations with US negotiators, a source of the matter told Reuters.
Araqchi said on Thursday (22) that Washington would have legal responsibility if Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities after a report from CNN that Israel could be preparing attacks.
Three Iranian sources said on Tuesday (20) that the clerical leadership does not have a clear recovery plan if efforts to overcome the impasse fail.
This content was originally published in USA and Iran resume nuclear agreement negotiations on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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