According to the Reuters agency, technical discussions should take place in Vienna next week.
“We ended the day after significant progress in the negotiations between the United States and Iran,” stated Omani Foreign Minister Badr Busajdí.
But the portal Axios reported that American negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, were disappointed by the attitude of the Iranians. But they haven’t made an official statement yet.
According to the available information, the split already occurred in the very determination of the topics to be discussed. While the US demands negotiations on a complete halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment, ballistics program and support for Shia militants in the Middle East, Iran insists that it will negotiate only on limiting its nuclear program, which is exclusively focused on the peaceful use of the atom.
Trump has given Tehran until the end of February, and if it does not conclude the relevant agreement by then, it is threatened with an attack. For this, the Pentagon gathered a large military force, including two aircraft carriers, within operational distance of Iran.
However, the USA has not yet revealed what they want to achieve. If the intention is to force Iran to make concessions in negotiations on its nuclear program, limited strikes may not have the desired effect, Axios reported. The effort to overthrow the Iranian leadership, led by the spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would mean a large-scale, and above all protracted military campaign for the US, into which Trump will not want to be drawn into with regard to the upcoming elections for the House of Representatives and parts of the Senate in the middle of the presidential mandate.
American loss of life would be completely unacceptable for voters. Iran has already warned that in the event of a strike, it will consider all US military bases in the Middle East as legitimate targets, which directly threatens tens of thousands of US troops in the area.
