After US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington was ready to meet with Iran on Friday, noting that the location of the meeting had not yet been decided, Axios reported, citing American officials, that plans for dialogue with Tehran were threatened with failure.
Two American officials said that the United States informed Iran on Wednesday of its rejection of Tehran’s demands to change the location and format of the talks scheduled for Friday. They explained that Washington discussed the request to transfer negotiations from Türkiye to the Sultanate of Oman, but ultimately decided to reject the request.
A senior American official said: “We told them: Either this or nothing, and the response came: Well, then nothing.”
He added that the United States is ready to hold talks this week or next week if Iran agrees to return to the previously agreed-upon format.
The official warned that Washington “wants to reach a real agreement quickly, otherwise it will start looking at other options,” in a clear reference to US President Donald Trump’s threats to resort to the military option.
In a related context, American officials reported that Steve Witkoff, the White House envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, will travel to Qatar on Thursday to hold talks with the Qatari Prime Minister about the Iranian file, and that they will return later to the United States without meeting the Iranian party.
On the other hand, Israeli Channel 12 reported that Friday’s talks between Iran and the United States were cancelled.
For its part, Reuters quoted an Iranian official as saying that Tehran is ready to hold talks with Washington on the nuclear file only, warning that “the United States’ insistence on including non-nuclear issues puts the talks at risk.”
The United States and Iran had agreed in principle to hold talks on Friday in Istanbul, with countries from the Middle East attending as observers.
However, on Wednesday, Iran announced through official news agencies that the talks will be held in Muscat, with the participation of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and American envoy Steve Witkoff.
Tehran confirmed that the negotiations will follow a formula similar to previous rounds, and will be limited to the nuclear file and the lifting of sanctions, without addressing the ballistic missile program or defensive capabilities, which are files that Washington and countries in the region insist on including.
This stumble comes in light of a mutual escalation in tone, after Trump threatened military action against Iran if the diplomatic track failed, while Tehran vowed a decisive response to any attack it was exposed to.
