The US and Iran had been holding secret talks aimed at de-escalating tensions in the Middle East, which were making good progress, but the sudden deaths of the country’s president, Ibrahim Raishi, and foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, overturned the situation.
Of particular importance is the fact that two top officials of the Biden administration participated in the indirect talks with Iranian officials held in Oman.
In particular, the US president’s top advisor for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, and Abram Paley, the acting US envoy for Iran, participated in the talks.
This was the first round of talks between the US and Iran since January, when similar negotiations took place again in Oman.
McGurk and Paley arrived in Oman on Tuesday and met with Omani mediators, the sources said. It is unclear who represented Iran in the talks.
The sources said the talks focused on clarifying the consequences of the actions of Iran and its proxies in the region and discussing US concerns about the state of Iran’s nuclear program.
According to three Iranian sources close to the talks, McGurk held indirect talks earlier this month with Ali Bagheri Khani, Iran’s chief negotiator with the West, who has now taken over the foreign ministry after Abdollahian’s death. .
The talks took place in Muscat, which hosted secret meetings between Tehran and Washington a decade ago that led to the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) nuclear deal.
They were close to making some sort of deal
Talks between Bagheri Kani and McGurk were progressing well and they were close to reaching some kind of agreement.
Bagheri Kani was the deputy foreign minister at the time, but after the accident he is now acting foreign minister. The talks focused on four issues:
- The shared desire for a change of government in Israel,
- An end to Israel’s war in Gaza,
- Preventing the conflict from spreading to other parts of the Middle East.
- To have served as a way to broker a truce between the US on the one hand and Iran and its allies on the other.
Tensions
Following the October 7 attack on Israel led by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza, Iran’s allies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” such as Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement, officially known as Ansar Allah, and paramilitary groups in Iraq has organized attacks against American targets in the region.
Iraqi drones and missiles were also shot down by US forces in April when Iran launched a massive attack on Israel in response to the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders at the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
The JCPOA, under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, collapsed after the US unilaterally withdrew under the Trump administration in 2018.
But last year, Washington and Tehran reached a prisoner swap deal that included the US handing over $6 billion in seized oil revenue.
The talks that led to the deal in August also proposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting there was room for some more targeted deals, rather than the more broad-based JCPOA.
No debate before the election
Before the talks began in Muscat, McGurk met with Iran’s UN envoy, Saeed Iravani, according to some sources. During the meeting, McGurk quoted Beitnen as saying: “I will not negotiate with Iran on a nuclear and comprehensive deal until after the US election because the Iranians cannot keep their promises.”
McGurk said Biden had complained that he faced “excessive pressure and humiliation” from Republicans when the Rice administration refused to revive the JCPOA in 2022.
“In my opinion, the JCPOA is dead, and we will negotiate after the election, provided it is a comprehensive negotiation that goes beyond the JCPOA, covering regional issues as well,” Biden said at the time.
A new round of US-Iran talks is not expected anytime soon
Following Raishi’s death, Iran must hold presidential elections within 50 days, and major foreign policy decisions are unlikely to be made during this period of uncertainty. The US presidential election is meanwhile scheduled for November.
Given this situation, we should expect disruption and a breakdown in Iran’s negotiations with the Americans.
Since both the president and the secretary of state have passed away and elections are soon to be held, negotiations will likely be delayed until the elections, as was the case during the 2021 presidential race, when talks were postponed until after the elections.
The US has not officially confirmed the talks
The US has not officially confirmed the talks but State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday that the Biden administration has ways to communicate with Iran when necessary.
“The Biden administration continues to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the essential activities that would be necessary to produce a nuclear test device,” he said.
Patel added that the US does not believe Iran’s supreme leader has made a decision “to continue the weapons program that we believe Iran suspended or stopped in late 2003.”
