Iran, US to Hold Talks in Rome in Bid to Reach Nuclear Deal

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On Saturday, 19 April 2025, Iran and the United States will resume nuclear negotiations in Rome in an effort to end their decades-long disagreement over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

A week after a first session in Muscat that both sides characterised as fruitful, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and U.S. President Steve Witkoff will engage in indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman.

According to a post on his Telegram channel, Araqchi has travelled to Rome to participate in the second round of negotiations. Iran believes it can negotiate a nuclear program agreement with the United States as long as Washington is pragmatic, he stated in Moscow on Friday.

However, Tehran has attempted to dampen hopes of a speedy agreement after some Iranian officials conjectured that sanctions would be removed shortly. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, declared this week that he was "neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic."

U.S. President Donald Trump, for his part, told reporters Friday: "I'm for just preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. They are unable to possess a nuclear weapon. Iran should be great, affluent, and wonderful, in my opinion.

President Trump has revived his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran since taking office again in January. During his first term in 2018, he renounced a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six nations and reinstated harsh sanctions on Tehran.

The United States wants Iran to stop producing highly enriched uranium because it thinks it will be used to make an atomic weapon.

Tehran, which has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is open to negotiating some restrictions in exchange for the sanctions being lifted, but it demands strict assurances that Washington won't back down again, as President Trump did in 2018.

Iran has been exceeding the 2015 agreement's uranium enrichment restrictions since 2019, producing significantly more uranium than the West claims is required for a civilian energy program.

Witkoff and Araqchi interacted briefly at the end of the first round last week, but officials from the two countries have not held direct negotiations since 2015, and Iran said the Rome talks would also be held indirectly through the Omani mediators.

Russia, a party to Iran's 2015 nuclear agreement, has offered "to assist, mediate, and play any role" that will be beneficial to Iran and the United States.



PUKMEDIA