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Iran and the United States are set to begin a third round of nuclear negotiations in Switzerland, with both sides maintaining their preference for a diplomatic solution, even as Washington imposed sweeping new sanctions and continues to build up its military presence in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in the Swiss city of Geneva on Wednesday and met his Omani counterpart, Badr Albusaidi, who is facilitating the indirect talks scheduled for Thursday.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Before his departure, Araghchi said a \u201cfair, balanced and equitable deal\u201d was within reach, while reiterating that Iran was not seeking an atomic weapon and was not ready to give up its \u201cright to peaceful use of nuclear technology\u201d.<\/p>\n The talks come against a backdrop of continued mistrust, with the rhetoric from both sides oscillating between confrontation and engagement.<\/p>\n In Washington, DC, US Vice President JD Vance accused Iran of attempting to rebuild its nuclear programme after US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites last June, and said\u00a0Tehran should take Washington\u2019s threats of military action seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cThe principle is very simple: Iran can\u2019t have a nuclear weapon. If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us,\u201d he told reporters at the White House. \u201cIn fact, we\u2019ve seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n Vance went on to say that US President Donald Trump wanted to address \u201cthat problem diplomatically\u201d but \u201chas other options as well\u201d.<\/p>\n There was no immediate comment from Tehran on Vance\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n The status of Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure remains unclear.\u00a0Trump has claimed that US attacks on Iran last year \u201cobliterated\u201d the programme, but the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have not been permitted to verify what, if anything, remains at the targeted sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.<\/p>\n A day earlier, Trump, in his State of the Union address, appeared to lay the groundwork for another potential military confrontation, accusing Iran of harbouring \u201csinister nuclear ambitions\u201d and developing missiles capable of striking the US \u2013 claims that Iranian officials flatly rejected.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever they\u2019re alleging in regards to Iran\u2019s nuclear program, Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles, and the number of casualties during January\u2019s unrest is simply the repetition of \u2018big lies\u2019,\u201d Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote on X.<\/p>\n He went on to compare the Trump administration\u2019s approach to the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler\u2019s minister of information.<\/p>\n US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Saint Kitts and Nevis, said the talks in Geneva would focus primarily on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme and reiterated Washington\u2019s concern about Iranian ballistic missiles, which he said it was attempting to develop into intercontinental-range weapons.<\/p>\n Iranian insistence on excluding the missile programme from negotiations, he said, was \u201ca big, big problem\u201d.<\/p>\n Araghchi said earlier that Iran\u2019s missiles were of a \u201cdefence nature\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are only to build deterrence and help us to defend ourselves,\u201d he told the India Today news outlet.<\/p>\n The negotiations on Thursday are being led on the US side by Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The first round was held in Oman on February 6, followed by a second session in Geneva on February 17.<\/p>\n Araghchi said afterwards that the two sides had reached a tentative understanding on the broad principles that would guide further discussions, though no substantive agreement had been reached.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Al Jazeera\u2019s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the two sides appear far apart on the core issues.<\/p>\n These include disagreements over Iranian uranium enrichment as well as non-nuclear issues \u201crelated to foreign assistance, ballistic missiles, defence capabilities, as well as regional activities of the country\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is gaps obviously exist,\u201d Asadi said. \u201cAnd it remains to be seen whether diplomatic engagement could pave the way for a final solution between Washington and Tehran. Until then and for the time being, if anything is certain, that is uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n Iran has warned that any US strike would prompt retaliatory attacks on American military bases throughout the Middle East, where tens of thousands of troops are deployed. Tehran has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a significant share of the world\u2019s oil supply passes.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, summarised Tehran\u2019s stance bluntly.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you choose the table of diplomacy \u2013 a diplomacy in which the dignity of the Iranian nation and mutual interests are respected \u2013 we will also be at that table,\u201d he said on Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Student News Network. \u201cBut if you decide to repeat past experiences through deception, lies, flawed analysis and false information, and launch an attack in the midst of negotiations, you will undoubtedly taste the firm blow of the Iranian nation.\u201d<\/p>\n US Central Command spokesman Tim Hawkins said Washington remained ready to respond to any escalation.<\/p>\n \u201cDeterrence from our perspective comes through a show of strength,\u201d he said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring a time of heightened tensions, we are going to make sure that we have the forces in place to protect our troops; that\u2019s what you\u2019re seeing. Additionally, with respect to Iran \u2026 our focus remains on ensuring we have the right forces in place to protect our troops, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n The US has assembled its biggest deployment of aircraft and warships to the Middle East in decades.<\/p>\n The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has been stationed in the Arabian Sea since late January, while Trump has ordered the USS Gerald R Ford \u2013 the world\u2019s largest aircraft carrier \u2013 along with three destroyers and more than 5,000 additional military personnel to the region.<\/p>\n The build-up extends to air power.<\/p>\n Dozens of fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s, F-15s and F-16s, have been tracked flying to the Middle East from bases in the US and Europe, according to the Military Air Tracking Alliance, a team of open-source analysts that monitors military flight activity.<\/p>\n Separately on Wednesday, the\u00a0Department of the Treasury also announced sanctions\u00a0against more than 30 individuals, entities and vessels it said had helped finance Iran\u2019s oil sales, ballistic missile programme and weapons production.<\/p>\n \u201cIran exploits financial systems to sell illicit oil, launder the proceeds, procure components for its nuclear and conventional weapons programs, and support its \u200cterrorist proxies,\u201d \u200cSecretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera\u2019s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US was seeking to increase its leverage with the military buildup as well as the latest sanctions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hope is that Iran will come to an agreement to limit its uranium enrichment programme, and also that there can be room for negotiations later on, regarding not only its support for proxies in the region, but limiting its ballistic missile programme,\u201d Halkett said. \u201cThe US is promising, should those concessions be made, it will provide the economic relief that Iran\u2019s economy needs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Iran and the United States are set to begin a third round of nuclear negotiations in Switzerland, with both sides maintaining their preference for a diplomatic solution, even as Washington imposed sweeping new sanctions and continues to build up its military presence in the Middle East. Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in the Swiss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13549","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\/13549","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=13549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Big, big problem\u2019<\/h2>\n
US imposes new sanctions<\/h2>\n
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