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Despite Israel pushing for all the talks to include ballistic missile production, Iran held their nerve with the USA and asked not only for a change of venue for talks with the US, but also to limit the talks just to the nuclear file.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Twitter last night: “Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10am Friday – I’m grateful to our Omani brothers for making all the necessary arrangements.”
Later, a White House official told NewsNation that talks with Iran would still take place on Friday, after other officials had confirmed to Axios previously that all talks had been cancelled.
Earlier in the day, an ultimatum was issued to Iran, stating that the talks would be held in the format proposed in Turkey, or there would be no talks, and the talks would also include ballistic missiles as per Israel’s instructions, so Iran replied that they were prepared to cancel the talks.
However, Axios later reported that the US-Iran talks would take place in a bi-lateral format and only focus on the nuclear issue, noting that at least nine Gulf countries reached out to the White House at the highest levels to strongly urge the US not to cancel the meeting.
A US official told Axios: “They [regional countries] 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.”
According to the US official: “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.”
Later, another US official told Axios that the Trump administration had agreed to hold the meeting to ‘be respectful’ to US allies in the region and “in order to continue pursuing the diplomatic track.”
