U.S.-Iran nuclear talks back on after Arab leaders lobby White House
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Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Jan. 17. Photo: Iranian Leader Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images
Plans for U.S.-Iran nuclear talks on Friday are back on, after several Middle Eastern leaders urgently lobbied the Trump administration on Wednesday afternoon not to follow through on threats to walk away, two U.S. officials told Axios.
- The talks will be held in Oman, as Iran insisted, despite the U.S. initially rejecting changes to the original plan to meet in Istanbul.
Why it matters: The standoff had sparked fears across the Middle East that President Trump would pivot to military action. At least nine countries from the region reached out to the White House at the highest levels strongly urging the U.S. not to cancel the meeting.
- "They asked us to keep the meeting and listen to what the Iranians have to say. We have told the Arabs that we will do the meeting if they insist. But we are very skeptical," one U.S. official said.
- A second U.S. official said the Trump administration agreed to hold the meeting "to be respectful" to U.S. allies in the region and "in order to continue pursuing the diplomatic track."
Catch up quick: The U.S. and Iran had agreed to meet on Friday in Istanbul, with other Middle Eastern countries participating as observers.
- But the Iranians said on Tuesday that they wanted to move the talks to Oman and hold them in a bilateral format, to ensure that they focused only on nuclear issues and not other matters like missiles that are priorities for the U.S. and countries in the region.
- U.S. officials were at first open to the request to change the location, then rejected it, before reversing course once again after Axios reported that the meeting was off.
The latest: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed on X that talks were "scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10 am Friday," adding: "I'm grateful to our Omani brothers for making all necessary arrangements."
Flashback: "We told them it is this or nothing, and they said, 'Ok, then nothing,'" a senior U.S. official had told Axios earlier on Wednesday.
- "We want to reach a real deal quickly or people will look at other options," the senior official said at the time, alluding to Trump's repeated threats of military action.
- "We didn't want to be flexible here because if there is a deal it has to be real. We didn't want to go back to the old way of doing things," another U.S. official said.
Zoom in: The U.S. officials said the U.S. and Iran had initially agreed to hold talks in Istanbul on two tracks:
- Direct U.S.-Iran talks on a nuclear deal.
- Multilateral talks on issues like Iran's missile program, support for proxy groups, and human rights violations in the violent crackdown on protesters.
As of now, only bilateral talks on the nuclear issue are planned in Oman.
State of play: On Tuesday, White House envoy Steve Witkoff met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of senior Israeli defense officials to coordinate positions ahead of the talks with Iran.
- Israeli officials say Witkoff was briefed on Israel's latest intelligence on Iran, and that Netanyahu emphasized that Iran can't be trusted.
What's next: Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Qatar on Thursday for talks on Iran with the prime minister.
- From there, they will travel to Oman to meet the Iranians.
- The U.S. officials said that considering Iran's behavior in recent days, and the lack of a breakthrough in previous talks, they're still skeptical a deal is possible.
The bottom line: "We are not naive about the Iranians. If there is a real conversation to have we will have it but we are not going to waste our time," the second U.S. official said.
This is a developing story and has been updated throughout.
