BarcelonaThere isn’t even a public agreement on the agenda, and until the last minute the meeting has been marred by disagreements over where it should be held. But despite the difficulties, the United States and Iran are finally meeting today in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with the aim of discussing the nuclear arsenal of the two powers. Washington wants Tehran to limit its nuclear arsenal, but the ayatollahs’ regime has been opposed to a deal that could tie its hands in its goal of controlling the region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are participating in today’s talks. However, they will not see each other face to face. According to Iran, the negotiations, which have already started, are being done indirectly, with Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad al Busaidi, acting as an intermediary. The meetings will take place in a context of threats from the US to Iran, and it is that they come a few weeks after the White House warned of a military intervention in the country if the authorities did not stop the bloody repression of the protests against the Islamist regime, in which 6,300 people died – and 17,000 more cases are waiting to be verified – according to the NGO Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Under the pretext of pressuring Tehran in this regard, Washington has carried out an extensive military deployment in the Middle East.
The US, however, is also threatening Tehran with military action if the country’s authorities are not willing to reach an agreement to limit its development of nuclear weapons. Iran, at the outset, is opposed to an agreement in this sense. However, before entering the summit, Minister Araghchi assured that his country participates in the negotiations “in good faith”. However, he has also made it clear that he will remain “firm” in his positions and Iran’s rights.
There is currently no agreement between the two powers that would put obstacles in the way of the accumulation and improvement of their respective atomic arsenals. In 2018, in Donald Trump’s first term, the US unilaterally abandoned the agreement that the White House had reached with Iran three years earlier to limit Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Although there have been attempts to reach an agreement, so far it has not been possible.
In addition to limiting the nuclear program, Washington is also looking for Iran to open up to negotiations on its ballistic missile program. This point is key in Tehran’s desire to control the region, since it has projectiles that can easily reach Israel, as happened in June last year during the twelve-day war after Tel-Aviv launched an attack against Iran. The US would like to set limits in this folder as well, but Tehran has already made it clear that today’s talks must be limited to the nuclear field.
In the talks this Friday, the US also wants to put two more issues on the table: Iran’s support for armed groups such as Hamas and the repression of the Ayatollahs’ regime in the protests of recent weeks. This is what the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, explained this Wednesday, although Washington and Tehran have not yet finalized a specific agenda.
A world without nuclear limits
The meeting between these two powers comes in a worrying context regarding the arms race. Beyond Iran, the New Start treaty, an agreement between Russia and the US that put limits on their nuclear arsenals, expired on Thursday. Moscow had offered Washington to extend the agreement for another year. Trump had rejected it, but in the last hours and in the framework of the talks in Abu Dhabi on Ukraine, the Americans and Russians would now have shown themselves ready to respect the limits of the agreement for the next six months and, during that time, to negotiate a new treaty.
