U.S. President Donald Trump said that talks with Iran over its nuclear program were going ‘OK.’
“I think they’re going OK,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “Nothing matters until you get it done, so I don’t like talking about it. But it’s going OK. The Iran situation is going pretty good, I think.”
The White House called the talks involving Trump’s Middle East envoy Steven Witkoff, U.S. Ambassador to Oman Ana Escrogima and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi “very positive and constructive.”
Separately, a senior Russian diplomat described the outcome of talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme as “encouraging”.
“At the end of today’s meeting in Oman, both the Iranians and the Americans called the talks that took place positive and constructive,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russian ambassador to international bodies in Vienna, wrote on Telegram, adding, “This is encouraging.”
Saturday’s exchanges were indirect and mediated by Oman, as Iran had wanted, rather than face-to-face, as Trump had demanded. Each delegation had its separate room and exchanged messages via Oman’s foreign minister, according to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei.
Araqchi said his delegation had a brief encounter with its U.S. counterpart headed by Witkoff, after they exited the talks.
“After the end of more than 2-1/2 hours of indirect talks, the heads of the Iranian and American delegations spoke for a few minutes in the presence of the Omani foreign minister as they left the talks. It (the encounter) was based on our political etiquette,” Araqchi said.
“The current focus of the talks will be de-escalating regional tensions, prisoner exchanges and limited agreements to ease sanctions (against Iran) in exchange for controlling Iran’s nuclear programme,” an Omani source told Reuters.
Baghaei denied this account but did not specify what was false.
