Will the U.S. and Iran meet to discuss nukes?

Iran’s nuclear program in a crisis of political stability: U.S.-Iran talks after the airstrikes on Sunday

Iran appeared to adopt ambiguous stance on Saturday regarding further negotiations with the United States over the future of their nuclear program while also suggesting that there was still a decision to be made.

The sixth round of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks was scheduled for Sunday in Muscat, the capital of Oman. It was thrown into question by the Israeli airstrikes that began on Friday and continued on Saturday, targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, top military commanders and senior nuclear program officials.

“It is still unclear what decision we will make for Sunday,” Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying by Iran’s state news media.

The Islamic Republic was suspending its participation in the talks until further notice, as the state news media had said after the attacks on Friday.

He said that Israel wanted to entangle western nations in the region’s conflicts. “It seems that it has succeeded this time as well and has somehow influenced a diplomatic process with this adventure. This shows that American policymakers are still influenced by this regime.

The senior Iranian figures killed by Israel included Ali Shamkhani, a former secretary of the Supreme National Council, who was overseeing the talks as part of a committee named by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mr Baghaei had accused Washington of having an effect on the talks. He accused the U.S. of acting in a way that made dialogue meaningless, by giving Israel its consent to attack and by claiming to want to negotiate.

“Iran’s leadership will be wise to negotiate at this time,” McCoy Pitt, a senior State Department official, said in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday focused on the crisis.

Early on Sunday, Mr. Trump warned Iran against attacking American forces in a message on Truth Social. He said that we could easily end the conflict between Iran and Israel. Whether Israel would accept such a deal, if Iran is allowed to enrich at all, is an open question.

A quick deal now that would give up enrichment would be seen as a surrender, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served in the State Department during the Obama administration. It could make the Iran government more vulnerable. “They won’t give up enrichment, not this easily,” he said. “They’re not going to surrender.”

At the same time, Mr. Trump, who has said he knew about the Israeli attack beforehand, has done nothing in public to restrain the Israelis. When Washington announced last week that the talks would continue on Sunday, it is not clear whether it knew when Israel would attack, but the Iranians are convinced that Washington was complicit in trying to fool them into believing that any Israeli attack would come afterward.

Mr. Trump clearly sees the war as a form of diplomacy. On Friday, he wrote: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it. The day is 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has argued that the attack on Iran was to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, even as a sixth round of talks to prevent that very outcome was scheduled between the United States and Iran.

Israel is not likely to meet the goal of demolishing Iran’s nuclear program without American involvement, which is what Mr. Trump has resisted.