Patrick Sykes and Arsalan Shahla
The US and Iran have made progress in nuclear talks in Geneva, with Tehran’s negotiators scheduled to return with a new proposal in two weeks, a US official said, in a cautiously upbeat assessment that suggests the chances of an imminent military clash are low.
US Vice President JD Vance said the Tuesday talks went well “in some ways”, but that the Iranians were not yet willing to recognise some of President Donald Trump’s red lines.
“The president of the United States is very much trying to find a solution here, whether it’s through diplomatic options or through another option, that means the Iranians cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said on the Fox News program The Briefing.
In an earlier statement, Iran said it had reached a “general agreement” with the US on the terms of a potential nuclear deal that would lift sanctions on Tehran and ease the risk of a broader war in the Middle East.
“We were able to reach a general agreement on a set of guiding principles, based on which we will proceed from now on and move toward drafting a potential agreement,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state TV after meeting US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva.
The two sides will each draft and exchange texts for a deal before setting a date for a third round of talks, the US official said, cautioning that the next stage would be “more difficult and detailed”.
Trump said on Monday he planned to be involved in the talks, at least indirectly. “I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” he told reporters.
The apparent diplomatic progress came despite growing military deployments in the Persian Gulf.
Iran said on Tuesday that it would close part of the Strait of Hormuz – a key choke point for energy exports from the world’s top oil-producing region – for several hours due to military drills. The US has also sent a second aircraft carrier to the region.
Iran has threatened to fully close the Strait of Hormuz in the past, but has never done so. Brent crude is up almost 13 per cent this year, largely because of the US-Iran tensions and the prospect of a war in the oil-rich region.
Several tanker industry veterans said the Iranian exercises hadn’t prompted any fresh guidance to shipping in the past few days that they were aware of. They said they didn’t anticipate any disruption to oil shipments.
Success in the talks could pave the way for a landmark agreement between Tehran and Washington that would lift a slew of tough sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and wider economy in exchange for major restrictions on its nuclear program.
The Iranian delegation is “ready to stay longer to finalise any agreement, several days or even weeks,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier, according to the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency.
The US is also hosting talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday, days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbour.
Military drills
The military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz were focused on delivering a “decisive” response to security threats, an Iranian commander said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was monitoring the strait continuously and planned to unveil additional equipment soon to boost its military capacities there, navy commander Alireza Tangsiri was quoted as saying, according to the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency.
“Diplomacy and the battlefield stand side by side,” Iranian analyst Akbar Masoumi wrote in an analysis for Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency. “These two complement each other and together have created a positive process for the country.”
Earlier, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stepped up his warnings that the US will suffer if it strikes the country, as Trump has repeatedly threatened if the sides can’t reach a deal.
“They keep saying: ‘We sent a warship towards Iran’,” Khamenei said. “Well, a warship is certainly a dangerous weapon, but more dangerous than a warship is the weapon that can sink this warship to the bottom of the sea.”
Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have gained urgency since Trump deployed an additional aircraft carrier to the region and suggested regime change would be “the best thing that could happen” to the country.
Israel is pushing for the negotiations to include limits on the range of Tehran’s ballistic missiles, but Iran has so far dismissed that as a red line.
During a visit to Tel Aviv on Monday, US Republican senator Lindsey Graham said Washington was “weeks, not months” away from a decision between diplomacy and military action against Iran.
Bloomberg, AP
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