CNN
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Iran and the US will begin important talks on Saturday to reach a new nuclear deal to ease tensions that could further involve the wider region and avoid another conflict in the Middle East.
The conference, held in Oman’s Gulf states, could be the first direct consultation between Iranian and American officials in a decade, but Iran claims they are indirect. President Donald Trump has given Iran a two-month deadline to accept transactions that will either reduce its nuclear footprint or eliminate the program entirely.
“These will be direct consultations with Iranians, and I want to make that very clear,” White House press chief Karolyn Leavitt said at a press conference on Friday. She added that Trump’s ultimate goal is to “ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons.”
This weekend, Trump administration’s Middle Eastern envoy Steve Witkov arrives for consultations with Iranian officials, adding another file to an array of complex and unruly issues in his expanded portfolio, following a face-to-face meeting with Russian Ukrainian president in Ukraine in St. Petersburg on Friday.
Saturday’s interests are high: Trump said Israel, advocating for an attack on Iran, is taking the lead, but if new nuclear deals are not reached, Trump said a military strike against Iran could be made.
“If we need the army, we’re going to have it,” Trump said Wednesday. “Israel will obviously be very involved in that. They will be its leader.”
However, Iran repeatedly refused to negotiate under obsession. “Red Lines” were laid out for Friday consultations, including “blackmail” language, “excessive demands” about Iran’s nuclear program, and the Iranian defense industry.
The exact agenda of the consultation remains unknown, but the president has vowed to secure a “stronger” agreement than the 2015 nuclear deal mediated by the Iranian regime. Trump called it a “disastrous” agreement that withdrew the contract in 2018, giving money to the administration that sponsored the terrorist attacks.
Trump wants to attack deals that prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but do not specify how it differs from previous agreements known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA. The deal was struck during the Obama administration and was intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting Western sanctions.
US officials suggest that Tehran could urge Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear program, including the private energy components that are eligible under the UN nuclear treaty.
However, Iranian officials have dismissed the proposal as a non-starter, accusing the US of using it as an excuse to undermine and ultimately defeat the Islamic Republic.
Experts say Tehran considers its nuclear program as its biggest source of leverage and abandoning it would dangerously expose the country.
But the administration also says it’s not just looking at nuclear deals that can be done. They also want to engage Iran on a wide range of issues, the senior administration said.
Saturday’s meeting will test whether Iran is willing to have high-level discussions.
“Iran is eager to jump into something like the JCPOA, so the question is: Are they willing to put anything else on the table?” the official said.
Trump threatens the outlook for war as a result of failed talks, but other US authorities have put on a much less wary tone.
Witkov emphasized that diplomatic solutions are within reach later last month. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, he promoted the US military and laid out the vulnerabilities of Iran, but quickly made it clear that “this is not a threat.”
“If Iranians have heard this broadcast, this is not a threat to me. It’s the president who has that authority,” he said.
One former US official said the talks could be a starting point for both parties that would hinder whether further negotiations are possible.
A former US official who negotiated with Iran on the nuclear issue said:
“I think Iran is aiming to demonstrate flexibility as the devil is in the details of the nuclear lecture. It is unlikely that details will be addressed in this opening episode,” the previous official said.
For now, it’s not negotiations, State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce warned, but it’s a meeting with a specific goal.
“The very specific thing that needs to be achieved is to make the world a safer place and make sure Iran never gets nuclear weapons,” Bruce told reporters.
In a recent letter to Trump, Iran’s top leader showed openness to talks that could allow Iran to agree to measures that would hinder the construction of nuclear weapons.
However, the planning process for Saturday’s High Stakes talk is bumpy.
This week, there was doubt among those involved as to whether they would happen, given that Iran had said he would be indirectly involved while claiming there would be a direct meeting. However, as of Friday, talks appeared to be on track to move forward, a source familiar with the plan said.
In an article in the Washington Post this week, Foreign Minister Abbas Aragut warned that the war with Iran will drag the US and the region into the costly conflicts the president has chosen on anti-war platforms wants to avoid.
“I can’t imagine President Trump wanting to become another US president in a devastating war in the Middle East. This is what I imagine is expanding rapidly across the region and increasing the taxpayer dollars his predecessor burned in Afghanistan and Iraq to more than billions of dollars,” he writes.
Still, the Islamic Republic has significantly weakened regional power forecasts over the past 18 months due to Israel’s attacks on Israeli proxy and unprecedented attacks within its own borders – has chosen to come to the negotiation table.
Trump administration officials believe Israel’s actions against the position that Iran found himself in, and Witkov says that Israel’s strikes have left Iran’s defenses “internalized.”
But despite the united front with Israel that US administration officials have publicly presented, Trump’s announcement this week, and Saturday’s announcement of talks seemed a surprise to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sat next to him. Two Israeli sources told CNN the announcement “certainly not” is Israel’s preference.
When Netanyahu returned, he said that if the nuclear talk continues, he might hit Iran anyway.
CNN previously reported that the US intelligence agency has warned that both the Biden and Trump administrations are likely to attack targets related to Iran’s nuclear program as part of the country’s mission to enact a change of administration in the Islamic Republic.
CNN’s Michael Williams, Alayna Treene, Alireza Hajihosseini, Pauline Lockwood and Nadeen Ebrahim contributed to this report.