US President Donald Trump received Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 7 April at the Oval Office in Washington.
Prior to this second meeting between the two leaders since the beginning of Trump’s second term in office in January, the US announced that Trump had addressed a letter dated 12 March to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the letter, Trump wrote that he would give the Iranian government a two-month deadline to reach a diplomatic solution concerning its nuclear programme. If it did not do so, the letter said, the US would seriously consider other options not excluding the use of force.
In the Oval Office, and with the Israeli prime minister at his side, Trump made a surprising statement, telling the world that the US would hold “direct talks” with Iran “at the highest level”. The talks took place on 12 April in Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman, which had also previously acted as a go-between between the US and Iran.
For the record, it was in Muscat that former US secretary of state John Kerry in the Obama administration secretly negotiated the Iranian nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was concluded in July 2015. Three years later, Obama’s successor, Trump in his first term in office, decided to withdraw from the deal, a decision that led Iran to break the 2015 limits on the number of centrifuges it was allowed to use under its uranium enrichment programme.
Former US president Joe Biden (2021-2025) then tried in indirect talks with Iran through the European Union to negotiate compliance with the JCPOA by both the US and Iran in 2021. The negotiations failed for two main reasons. The first had to do with the insistence by the Iranians of lifting the US sanctions on Iran, and the second was the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
In July last year, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of the US Congress, during which he warned against a nuclear-armed Iran.
The Trump administration is more open than the previous one to using force if necessary to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon. Trump has said that if diplomacy fails in reaching a satisfactory agreement to resolve the differences concerning the Iranian nuclear programme, then Israel would participate in strikes against the nuclear installations of Iran. This is the first time that a US president has said publicly that there could be joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
According to a White House statement released on 13 April, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, accompanied by the US Ambassador to Oman Anna Escrogine, conducted talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on 12 April.
According to the statement, the discussions were “very positive and constructive.” Witkoff stressed the instructions he had received from Trump to “resolve” the differences between the US and Iran through “dialogue” and diplomacy “if that’s possible.” It considered the Muscat discussions to be a “step forward in achieving a mutually beneficial outcome”.
The two sides agreed to resume their talks next Saturday without specifying a venue. Trump himself also said that the meeting had been “very good.”
It goes without saying that the road to an agreement that would be advantageous to both sides will be a long and arduous one, since their respective positions concerning what is a “good deal” are wide apart. Moreover, the US administration is looking for a comprehensive agreement that would include the Iranian missile programme as well as the “destabilising role” played by Iran’s proxies in the Middle East, whereas the Iranians have insisted that the only topic they will discuss is the nuclear programme.
Witkoff spoke about “compromises” on the road ahead, assuming that talks between the two adversaries go on and that they are uninterrupted by any adverse developments. These could include the disappearance of the current Supreme Leader from the scene, with a battle for succession then playing out in Iran.
As far as the Israelis are concerned, Netanyahu has made it clear that he favours solving the question of the Iranian nuclear challenge by adopting the “Libyan solution” that opted for the complete dismantlement of Libya’s nuclear capacities and resources before 2011.
However, I would argue that the Iranian nuclear programme is far more advanced than the Libyan one was, and that this makes it doubtful that Tehran would agree to a repeat of the Libyan precedent. For this reason, the US administration should not pressure the Iranians to follow this path. Witkoff’s talk of “compromises” is a more realistic and promising scenario.
When Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA during his first term in office in May 2018, he referred to Iranian missiles that could carry nuclear warheads and called for their destruction. I doubt that the Iranian government will agree to this. On the other hand, the third US condition in the talks, relating to curtailing Iran’s regional role through its support for its proxies in the Middle East, have made this unimportant, given the changes in the balance of power in the region after 18 months of war and destruction in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen.
The Middle East is on the verge of a complete reconfiguration whether the Americans and the Iranians favour diplomacy or whether their talks break down and the use of force becomes the scenario of choice for the Trump administration in destroying all Iran’s nuclear installations and resources.
However, even if this happens, the scientific and technological know-how that Iran has gained over the past two decades in the manufacture of nuclear arms thanks to the US decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal and gathering pace since May 2018, would not be destroyed by such a show of force on the American side.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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