Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to hold another round of talks next week over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Iranian state TV reported, as they ended their second round of negotiations in Rome over their decades-long standoff.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated indirectly through an Omani official who will shuttle messages between the two sides, Iranian officials said, a week after a first round of indirect talks in Muscat that both sides described as constructive.

Araqchi and Witkoff interacted briefly at the end of the first round, but officials from the two countries have not held direct negotiations since 2015 under former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Araqchi, in a meeting with his Italian counterpart ahead of the talks, said Iran had always been committed to diplomacy and called on “all parties involved in the talks to seize the opportunity to reach a reasonable and logical nuclear deal”.

“Such an agreement should respect Iran’s legitimate rights and lead to the lifting of unjust sanctions on the country while addressing any doubts about its nuclear work,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.

He said in Moscow on Friday that Iran believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the U.S. is possible as long as Washington is realistic.

“Rome becomes the capital of peace and dialogue,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X. “I encouraged (Araqchi) to follow the path of negotiation against nuclear arms. The hope of the Italian government is that all together may find a positive solution for the Middle East.”

Tehran has however sought to tamp down expectations of a quick deal, after some Iranian officials speculated that sanctions could be lifted soon. Iran’s utmost authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

For his part, Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Meanwhile, Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.

Trump, who ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six powers during his first term in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on the country since returning to the White House in January.

Washington wants Iran to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which it believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Tehran, which has always maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to negotiate some curbs in return for the lifting of sanctions, but wants watertight guarantees that Washington will not renege again.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.

Iran also rejects negotiating about defence capabilities such as its ballistic missile program and the range of Tehran’s domestically-produced missiles.

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 U.S..

(Reuters)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signaled a potential end to the tit-for-tat tariff hikes between the U.S. and China that shocked markets, and that a deal over the fate of social media platform TikTok may have to wait.

“I don’t want them to go higher because at a certain point you make it where people don’t buy,” Trump told reporters about tariffs at the White House, Reuters reported.

“So, I may not want to go higher or I may not want to even go up to that level. I may want to go to less because you know you want people to buy and, at a certain point, people aren’t gonna buy.”

Trump’s comments further pointed to a diminished appetite for sharply higher across-the-board tariffs on dozens of countries after markets reacted violently to their introduction on April 2.

The Republican president slapped 10% tariffs on most goods entering the country but delayed the implementation of higher levies, pending negotiations.

Still, he hiked rates on Chinese imports, now totaling 145%, after Beijing retaliated with its own counter-measures. Last week, China said “will not respond” to a “numbers game with tariffs,” its own signal that across-the-board rates would not rise further.

Trump said China had been in touch since the imposition of tariffs and expressed optimism that they could reach a deal.

While the two sides are in touch, sources told Reuters that free-flowing, high-level exchanges of the sorts that would lead to a deal have largely been absent.

Speaking with reporters, Trump repeatedly declined to specify the nature of talks between the countries or whether they directly included Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump has repeatedly extended a legal deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of the short video app used by 170 million Americans. On Thursday, he said a spin-off deal would likely wait until the trade issue is settled.

“We have a deal for TikTok, but it’ll be subject to China so we’ll just delay the deal ’til this thing works out one way or the other,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump met with his top national security aides on Tuesday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program ahead of a second meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials on Saturday, sources said.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, a session currently scheduled to be held in Oman. Trump spoke to the sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, about Oman’s mediation role between Washington and Tehran.

A White House official confirmed the White House Situation Room meeting on Iran and said the location was not unusual since Trump gets briefed there regularly to take advantage of the chamber’s secure setting.

A second source briefed on the meeting said Trump and his top aides discussed the Iran talks and next steps. U.S. officials have been working on a framework for a potential nuclear deal.

Trump has threatened military action against Iran if it does not give up its nuclear program while also stressing the need for diplomacy and negotiations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump’s bottom line in the talks, which included an initial session last Saturday, is he wanted to use negotiations to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Trump and the Omani leader also discussed ongoing U.S. operations against Yemen’s Houthis, she said.

“The maximum pressure campaign on Iran continues,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “The president has made it clear he wants to see dialogue and discussion with Iran, while making his directive about Iran never being able to obtain a nuclear weapon quite clear.”

She added that he had “emphasized” this directive during the call with Sultan Haitham.

Both sides described last weekend’s U.S.-Iran talks in Oman as positive.

Trump has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, after he ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s nuclear program has leaped forward since then. The two countries held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but made little, if any progress.

Iran’s clerical rulers have publicly said that demands such as dismantling the country’s peaceful nuclear program or its conventional missile capabilities were off the table.