![\"US-Iran](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Iran-US-Flags.jpg\")
Representational Photo<\/p>\nRepresentational Photo<\/p>\n
Geneva- Iran and the United States wrapped up another round of indirect talks in Geneva on Thursday aimed at reaching a deal on Tehran\u2019s nuclear program and potentially averting another war as the US gathers a massive fleet of aircraft and warships in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump wants a deal to constrain Iran\u2019s nuclear program, and he sees an opportunity while the country is struggling at home with growing dissent following nationwide protests.<\/p>\n
Iran also hopes to avert war, but maintains it has the right to enrich uranium and does not want to discuss other issues, like its long-range missile program or support for armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
Oman\u2019s foreign minister, who is mediating the talks, said Thursday that they had ended but \u201cwill resume soon.\u201d Badr al-Busaidi wrote on X that there had been \u201csignificant progress in the negotiation\u201d without elaborating.<\/p>\n
He said technical-level talks would take place next week in Vienna, home to the International Atomic Energy Agency. There was no immediate comment from US or Iranian officials.<\/p>\n
If America attacks, Iran has said US military bases in the region would be considered legitimate targets, putting at risk tens of thousands of American service members. Iran has also threatened to attack Israel, meaning a regional war again could erupt across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere would be no victory for anybody \u2014 it would be a devastating war,\u201d Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told India Today in an interview filmed Wednesday just before he flew to Geneva.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the Americans\u2019 bases are scattered through different places in the region, then unfortunately perhaps the whole region would be engaged and be involved, so it is a very terrible scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali Vaez, an Iran expert with the International Crisis Group, said it was a good sign that the Americans did not walk away immediately when Iran presented its latest proposal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere might still not be a breakthrough at the end of this day, but the very fact that the US team is returning shows that there is enough common ground between the two sides,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Geneva talks are the third meeting since June war<\/p>\n
The two sides held multiple rounds of talks last year that collapsed when Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June and the US carried out heavy strikes on its nuclear sites, leaving much of Iran\u2019s nuclear program in ruins even as the full extent of the damage remains unclear.<\/p>\n
Araghchi is representing Iran at the talks. Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and friend of Trump who serves as a special Mideast envoy, is heading up the US delegation with Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The talks are again being mediated by Oman, an Arab Gulf country that\u2019s long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.<\/p>\n
The two sides adjourned after around three hours of talks. Convoys carrying diplomats from both sides could be seen returning to the Omani diplomatic residence hours later, apparently to resume the negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been exchanging creative and positive ideas in Geneva today,\u201d said Oman\u2019s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who mediated. \u201cWe hope to make more progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said diplomats held \u201cvery intensive\u201d negotiations, meeting with the Omani envoy and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations\u2019 nuclear watchdog.<\/p>\n
He said the Iranians felt there were \u201cconstructive proposals\u201d offered on both nuclear issues and sanctions relief.<\/p>\n
Trump wants Iran to completely halt its enrichment of uranium and roll back both its long-range missile program and its support for regional armed groups. Iran says it will only discuss nuclear issues, and maintains its atomic program is for entirely peaceful purposes.<\/p>\n
US suspects Iran is rebuilding its program<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday that Iran is \u201calways trying to rebuild elements\u201d of its nuclear program. He said that Tehran is not enriching uranium right now, \u201cbut they\u2019re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran has said it hasn\u2019t enriched since June, but it has blocked IAEA inspectors from visiting the sites America bombed. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press have shown activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material there.<\/p>\n
The West and the IAEA say Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003. After Trump scrapped the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran ramped up its enrichment of uranium to 60 per cent purity \u2014 a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent.<\/p>\n
US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to restart a weapons program, but has \u201cundertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.\u201d Some Iranian officials have spoken openly about the country\u2019s readiness to produce a bomb if that decision is taken.<\/p>\n
Threat of military action sparks war fears<\/p>\n
If the talks fail, uncertainty hangs over the timing of any possible US attack.<\/p>\n
If the aim of potential military action is to pressure Iran to make concessions in nuclear negotiations, it\u2019s not clear whether limited strikes would work. If the goal is to remove Iran\u2019s leaders, that will likely commit the US to a larger, longer military campaign. There has been no public sign of planning for what would come next, including the potential for chaos in Iran.<\/p>\n
There is also uncertainty about what any military action could mean for the wider region. Tehran could retaliate against the American-allied nations of the Persian Gulf or Israel.<\/p>\n
Oil prices have risen in recent days in part due to those concerns, with benchmark Brent crude now around USD 70 a barrel. Iran in the last round of talks said it briefly halted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.<\/p>\n
Satellite photos shot Tuesday and Wednesday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the AP appeared to show that American vessels typically docked in Bahrain, the home of the US Navy\u2019s 5th Fleet, were all out at sea. The 5th Fleet referred questions to the US military\u2019s Central Command, which declined to comment. Before Iran\u2019s attack on a US base in Qatar during the closing days of the war last June, the 5th Fleet similarly scattered its ships at sea to protect against a potential attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Representational Photo Geneva- Iran and the United States wrapped up another round of indirect talks in Geneva on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[65,4868],"class_list":["post-20557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-geneva","tag-geneva","tag-iran-us-relations"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}