Iran’s Abbas Araghchi departs for Geneva for second round of US nuclear talks

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi departed for Switzerland on Sunday ahead of a second round of renewed nuclear negotiations with the United States later this week, the foreign ministry said.

In a statement, the ministry said Araghchi had “left Tehran for Geneva late Sunday heading a diplomatic and technical delegation” to participate in the next round of discussions and to conduct a series of diplomatic meetings.

It added that the indirect Iran–US nuclear talks would take place on Tuesday, with Oman facilitating the negotiations through its mediation and good offices.

Iran and the U.S. renewed negotiations earlier this month to tackle their decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme and avert a new military confrontation. The U.S. has dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the region and is preparing for the possibility of a sustained military campaign if the talks do not succeed, US officials have told Reuters.

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking at a news conference in Bratislava, said President Donald Trump had made it clear that he would prefer diplomacy and a negotiated settlement.

“No one’s ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran but we’re going to try,” Rubio said. In 2018, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the pact that had eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, and re-applied tough economic sanctions on Tehran.

On Friday, a source told Reuters that a U.S. delegation including envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would meet Iranian officials in Geneva on Tuesday, a meeting later confirmed to Reuters by a senior Iranian official on Sunday.

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“Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be traveling, I think they are traveling right now, to have important meetings and we’ll see how that turns out,” Rubio said, without providing further details.

While talks leading to the 2015 nuclear pact were multilateral, the current negotiations are confined to Iran and the United States, with Oman acting as mediator.

Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi signalled Iran’s readiness to compromise on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, telling the BBC on Sunday that the ball was “in America’s court to prove that they want to do a deal.”

The senior official referred to the Iranian atomic chief’s statement on Monday that the country could agree to dilute its most highly enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of sanctions as an example of Iran’s flexibility.
However, he reiterated that Tehran would not accept zero uranium enrichment, a key sticking point in past negotiations, with Washington viewing enrichment inside Iran as a potential pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran denies seeking such weapons.

With inputs from agencies