The US and Iran held indirect talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme on Thursday, aiming to avert American strikes after Washington’s secretary of state warned the Islamic republic’s refusal to also discuss its ballistic missiles was “a big problem”.
Badr Albusaidi, foreign minister of Oman — which mediated the talks — said negotiators had exchanged “creative and positive ideas” in Geneva on Thursday morning ahead of a break.
“We hope to make more progress” after resuming talks, he said. Iranian state media later reported that talks had restarted.
The negotiations — involving US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi — continued for longer than each of the two rounds of talks held earlier this year.
Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, said Thursday’s meeting was “intensive and serious”, adding that it would resume following “consultations with the capitals”.
He said that “significant and pragmatic initiatives” were raised regarding both Iran’s nuclear programme and the question of lifting US sanctions, something Tehran maintains is essential for any sustainable and mutually acceptable deal.
Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was also in Geneva to participate in “consultations” over Iran’s nuclear programme, Oman’s foreign ministry said.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment goals have been a longstanding barrier to progress towards a deal. Witkoff said this week that “zero enrichment” was an administration “red line”.
Iran has consistently rejected the condition, saying it has the right to enrich uranium for civil nuclear use as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty. Caving to the demand is considered a red line for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.
Tehran has also bristled at US demands that negotiations simultaneously address Iran’s ballistic missiles — which it has used to retaliate against Israel and US military assets and allies in the region — and its support for regional militant groups such as Hizbollah.
Marco Rubio had said on Wednesday that talks would be “largely focused on the nuclear programme”. But he criticised Tehran for refusing “to talk about [its] ballistic missiles to us or to anyone . . . That’s a big problem”.
The Islamic republic had “thousands of short-range ballistic missiles” that threatened US forces and its bases and partners in the region, America’s top diplomat said.
Tehran also had naval assets that “threaten shipping and try to threaten the US Navy” and conventional weapons that were “designed to attack the US”, he added.
Rubio’s comments came a day after US President Donald Trump accused Tehran of harbouring “sinister” intentions regarding its nuclear programme.
“The fact that they insist, not just on enrichment, but on enrichment and locations located inside of mountains . . . you would have to lack common sense to not know what that means, or what that could mean,” Rubio said.
Trump last year claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme when the US briefly joined Israel’s 12-day war with the Islamic republic.
Tehran has also said it will not agree to US demands to restrict its ballistic missile programme or to curb its support for armed regional proxies.
Rubio said on Wednesday that Trump’s “preference” was to “make progress on the diplomatic front”.
“I wouldn’t characterise tomorrow [Thursday] as anything other than . . . a set of conversations,” Rubio said. “If you can’t even make progress on the nuclear programme, it’s going to be hard to make progress on the ballistic missiles as well.”
Experts have struggled to assess the size of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal in the wake of the 12-day war last year. Iran fired more than 500 medium- to long-range missiles at Israel during the conflict, and many more were destroyed by Israeli strikes.
They said it was plausible that Iran’s short-range ballistic missile arsenal is still in the thousands, however, as few were used in the war.
Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Tehran’s “missile architecture is the backbone of Iran’s deterrence strategy”.
“At its core is an extensive missile and UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] arsenal designed to compensate for conventional military weakness and to deter its primary adversaries, meaning the United States and Israel,” Citrinowicz said.
Lynette Nusbacher, a former senior intelligence adviser to the UK cabinet on the Middle East, said the missile estimates had been hotly debated within the western intelligence community.
But few doubt Iran has the capability to strike nearby US bases and naval assets, which are closer geographically than Israel.
“They have lots of theatre ballistic missiles — maybe thousands — that can definitely be shot at US bases in the Persian Gulf region, and they have anti-ship cruise missiles on fast attack craft,” she said.
Iran has threatened to escalate any conflict with the US — which has amassed its largest naval force in the Middle East since its 2003 invasion of Iraq — in the event of an American attack.
A regime insider in Tehran told the FT that Iran had changed its strategy to one designed to impose tangible costs on US forces and assets if conflict erupted.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said: “I think there are some in the regime and in the Revolutionary Guards who think they made a mistake by not retaliating in a meaningful way” during the June war because it gave the impression of weakness, he said.
Cartography by Steven Bernard
