The United States and Iran held a second round of negotiations on Saturday in Rome over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, officials said.
U.S. Middle East envoy and billionaire Steve Witkoff met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the Omani Embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighborhood. The negotiations were mediated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi.
After the meeting, Araghchi said the two countries agreed to have another round of negotiations in Oman on April 26. But experts will meet there in the days before.
There was no immediate readout from the U.S. side after several hours of meetings.
“The talks were held in a constructive environment and I can say that is moving forward,” Araghchi told Iranian state television. “I hope that we will be in a better position after the technical talks.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement ahead of the talks that President Trump has been clear that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and that “all options remain on the table.”
“The president has authorized direct and indirect discussions with Iran to make this point clear, but he’s also made clear this cannot go on indefinitely,” Hughes said. “The Trump administration’s entire national security leadership team is committed to the president’s posture on Iran to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East and security here at home.”
Oman’s capital, Muscat, hosted the first round of negotiations between Araghchi and Witkoff last weekend, which saw the two men meet face to face after indirect talks. Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.
Oman’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X on Saturday that the sides agreed to keep talking to seek a deal that ensures Iran is “completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions, and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy.”
That the talks are even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. Mr. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, setting off years of attacks and negotiations that failed to restore the accord that drastically limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
At risk is a possible American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, or the Iranians following through on their threats to pursue an atomic weapon.
“I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Trump said Friday. “I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Iranian state TV the talks were “indirect” with the delegations in “different halls” at the embassy. He earlier wrote Saturday on X that Iran “always demonstrated, with good faith and a sense of responsibility, its commitment to diplomacy as a civilized way to resolve issues.”
“We are aware that it is not a smooth path, but we take every step with open eyes, relying also on the past experiences,” Baghaei added.
Araghchi met Saturday morning with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani ahead of the talks with Witkoff.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, also met Tajani on Saturday. Grossi’s agency would likely be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached, as it did with the 2015 accord Iran reached with world powers.
Tajani said Italy was ready “to facilitate the continuation of the talks even for sessions at the technical level.”
A diplomat deal “is built patiently, day after day, with dialogue and mutual respect,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have spiked over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and after U.S. airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens more.
Leave a Reply