Iran, talks with the USA today in Muscat: latest news

The American delegation with the White House envoy, Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s advisor, Jared Kushner, landed in Muscat yesterday afternoon. Tomorrow morning the two American envoys will meet Iranian officials led by Tehran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ababs Araghchi, who landed in Muscat during the night.

The talks, Araghchi’s spokesperson Esmail Baqaei wrote on social media after announcing the minister’s departure for the sultanate, aim to reach “a fair, mutually satisfactory and honorable agreement on the nuclear issue”. In fact, Iran would like only the nuclear issue to remain at the center of the negotiations while the USA is pushing to also include Tehran’s missile power and, ultimately, the repression of the population by the Ayatollah regime.

Iran expects “seriousness, realism and responsibility” from the United States in the talks, Baqaei put his hands ahead. While being aware of the “bitter experiences of the past”, including previous violations of commitments and the attacks in June last year, Iran has “the responsibility not to miss any opportunity to resort to diplomacy” in order to guarantee its interests and safeguard peace and stability in the region, the spokesperson further underlined.

But the climate with Washington remains tense. President Donald Trump on the eve of the summit he reiterated that the Iranians “are negotiating because they don’t want us to hit them”. And White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt recalled that the US president has “many options at his disposal to manage Iran, in addition to diplomacy”.

“The president has obviously been very clear in his requests to the Iranian regime,” Leavitt said, noting that the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity “is a point on which he has been very explicitand wants to see if an agreement can be reached.

For its part, Tehran says it is ready to respond to an American attack if the situation worsens. “Our message is clear and we have repeated it several times: we are fully ready to defend Iran with determination and seriousness”, army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia declared yesterday, underlining that ”the Iranian armed forces are able to easily strike American bases” in the region and are ”completely ready to defend Iran with determination and seriousness”.

Meanwhile, Russia, which has defined the “explosive situation not only for Iran, but also for the entire Middle East”makes it known that he is keeping an eye on his “close partner”. “Russia does not intend to impose itself as a mediator”, but “it is monitoring” what is happening with Iran and “it will not remain indifferent”, indeed it is “ready to contribute”, declared Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov also explained that ”Russia is willing to take the reserves of enriched uranium that Tehran has in excess if and when an agreement is reached between Iran and the United States”.