\n<\/p>\n
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi has said that \u201cgood progress\u201d has been made in indirect nuclear talks with the United States, as Washington warned that military action remains an option if diplomacy fails.<\/p>\n
The talks, mediated by Oman, were held in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday against a backdrop of increased military flexing by both sides in the Gulf region.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cUltimately, we were able to reach broad agreement on a set of guiding principles, based on which we will move forward and begin working on the text of a potential agreement,\u201d Araghchi told state television after the talks.<\/p>\n \u201cGood progress\u201d has been made, compared with the previous round in Oman earlier this month, he said, adding, \u201cWe now have a clear path ahead, which I think is positive.\u201d<\/p>\n He acknowledged that it \u201cwill take time to narrow\u201d the gap between the countries, and said that once\u00a0both sides come up with draft texts for an agreement, \u201cthe drafts would be exchanged and a date for a third round [of talks] would be set\u201d.<\/p>\n In Washington, DC, US Vice President JD Vance also appeared to indicate that his country preferred diplomacy, but painted a more mixed picture.<\/p>\n \u201cIn some ways, it went well; they agreed to meet afterwards,\u201d Vance said in a Fox News interview.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through,\u201d Vance told The Story with Martha MacCallum programme.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to keep on working it. But of course, the president reserves the ability to say when he thinks that diplomacy has reached its natural end,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n Iran has for years sought relief from sweeping sanctions imposed by the US, including a Washington-imposed ban on other countries buying its oil.<\/p>\n Tehran has said it wants the ongoing talks to focus on its uranium enrichment programme, insisting that any deal must deliver tangible economic benefit to Iran while maintaining its sovereignty and national security.<\/p>\n Washington has demanded that Iran forgo uranium enrichment on its soil, and has sought to expand the scope of talks to non-nuclear issues, such as Tehran\u2019s missile stockpile.<\/p>\n Iran has said it will not accept zero uranium \u200cenrichment and that its missile capabilities are off the table.<\/p>\n The talks come amid high tensions in the Gulf, with the US deploying two aircraft carriers to the region. The first \u2013 the USS Abraham Lincoln, with nearly 80 aircraft \u2013 was positioned about 700km (435 miles) from the Iranian coast as of Sunday, satellite images showed.<\/p>\n Its location puts at least a dozen US F\u201135s and F\u201118 fighter jets within striking distance. A second carrier was dispatched over the weekend.<\/p>\n Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned on Tuesday that the country had the ability to sink a US warship. \u201cA warship is certainly a dangerous weapon, but even more dangerous is the weapon capable of sinking it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Iran has also sought to display its military might, with its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) beginning a series of war games on Monday in the Strait of Hormuz to prepare for \u201cpotential security and military threats\u201d.<\/p>\n Just as the talks began in Geneva, Iranian state media said Iran was temporarily shutting parts of the Strait of Hormuz due to \u201csecurity precautions\u201d while the IRGC conducted military drills there.<\/p>\n Iran has \u2060repeatedly threatened to close the waterway, which is a vital oil export route from Gulf Arab states, in retaliation for any attack. The move would choke a fifth of global oil flows and send crude prices sharply higher.<\/p>\n Tehran has also threatened to strike US military bases in the region in the event of an attack.<\/p>\n A previous attempt at diplomacy collapsed last year when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran in June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb three nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.<\/p>\n Ali Vaez, the Crisis Group\u2019s Iran project director, told Al Jazeera he believed there is a lot of space for agreement on the nuclear front, \u201csimply because Iran\u2019s nuclear programme has been degraded on the ground, and so, some of the cost of the compromise has already sunk in\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be easier for the Iranians to accept zero enrichment for a period of time, because they have not spun a single centrifuge since the 12-day war back in June,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when it gets to non-nuclear questions, like regional activities or their missile programme, I think, at best, the Iranians will be willing to do superficial concessions, not the kind of grand bargain capitulation that the US expect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, reiterated in an interview published on Tuesday that Tehran was \u201cabsolutely not seeking nuclear weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone wants to verify this, we are open to such verification to take place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, we do not accept that we should be prevented from using nuclear science and knowledge to address our illnesses and to advance our industry and agriculture,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Iran has joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guarantees countries the right to pursue civilian nuclear power in return for requiring them to forgo atomic \u200cweapons \u200cand cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.<\/p>\n Israel, which has not signed the treaty, neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons, under a decades-old ambiguity policy designed to deter surrounding enemies. Scholars believe it does.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi has said that \u201cgood progress\u201d has been made in indirect nuclear talks with the United States, as Washington warned that military action remains an option if diplomacy fails. The talks, mediated by Oman, were held in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday against a backdrop of increased […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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