WITH the end of the first round of negotiations in Oman between Iran and the US, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and later President Donald Trump described the talks as good.
But the situation in the Gulf remains poised on a knife-edge. A US carrier strike group led by USS Abraham Lincoln is within 1,000 kilometres of Iran and at least one more is reportedly ready to be deployed to the region from the Pacific. Many US aerial assets have also been moved to American bases in the region.
Tehran has reacted by saying that such a military build-up does not contribute to creating a conducive atmosphere for talks; the commanders of the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have made clear that Iran’s finger remains on the trigger. The IRGC commander also assured Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours that in case of a US-Israeli attack on Iran, “our brothers” won’t be targeted but US bases on their soil will be legitimate targets.
Earlier this week, Al Jazeera published what it claimed was the draft of the deal to be discussed between the US and Iran. Al Jazeera said the draft was presented to both sides by mediators from Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt. Under that proposal, “Iran would commit to zero uranium enrichment for three years, after which it would limit enrichment to below 1.5 per cent … Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — including about 440 kilograms enriched to 60pc — would be transferred to a third country under the framework”.
The Al Jazeera report said the proposal included a ban on Iran initiating ballistic missile attacks and a commitment by it not to transfer weapons or technologies to its allied armed groups in the region. Neither side has commented. Bizarrely, the draft made no mention of what the other side would offer in return in the shape of lifting of crippling sanctions.
The Israeli-US plan is to eliminate threats to Israel. And Iran remains the only known threat to Israel.
Iran refused to hold negotiations in Turkiye, with Qatar, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also invited to the process, and stuck to its guns that negotiations start where they were interrupted when Israel and US attacked its nuclear and other targets in June last year. It seems to trust only Omani mediators.
It was not just that the US decided to attack Iranian targets in bad faith, while negotiations were on, that enraged Iran; its experience of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment to 3.67pc, would also guide Tehran’s hand. Araghchi was the key architect of that accord as deputy to the foreign minister then.
The JCPOA was concluded during the Obama administration with major Western powers and Iran. Even the limited sanctions relief agreed was withdrawn when Trump, bowing to the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the apartheid state of Israel, unilaterally tore up the accord and embarked on a maximum sanctions campaign.
Over the following five years, Iran gradually abandoned its commitments, eventually enriching uranium to near weapons-grade (over 60pc) and limiting IAEA (the global nuclear watchdog) inspector access. Former Pentagon adviser and renowned nuclear expert Theodore Postol says Iran should be treated as an undeclared nuclear-weapons state.
He says Iran had 13,000 centrifuges and needed a few arrays of 174 ‘cascading’ centrifuges each to enrich the ‘408’ kg of uranium (60 to 83.7pc enriched) it already had to make it weapons-grade and have a bomb in a matter of weeks. Prof Postol said he’d have advised the Iranians to do that because even after the JCPOA sanctions relief was minimal and, after the unilateral scrapping of the deal by the US, Iran had no obligation to comply.
US experts like Prof Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University, retired Col Douglas Macgregor, a former senior adviser to the US defence secretary and former US military and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter all believe the US, egged on by Israel, will be unwise to attack Iran as the latter’s sophisticated missile programme, developed and honed over decades of arms embargoes, and arsenal are too formidable for any nation to take chances with. (Their views are in various YouTube podcasts).
Some of these experts have also said that Israel, and US military assets in the region, could suffer serious damage in Iranian missile attacks. In the event of US military personnel losses, the backlash in the US would be immense. All these experts are critical of US policies and may well be underplaying US military might.
The Israeli-US plan for the region remains on course and that is to eliminate threats to Israel. Syria and Hezbollah have been neutralised, and the pro-Iran militias in Iraq are unknown in terms of their ability to threaten Tel Aviv. Iran remains the only known threat to Israel and intervened to try and stop the Gaza genocide.
With the infiltration of Mossad agents in Iran which, in my view, has undermined local opposition to the clergy, it is clear that even if military strikes are stayed, attempts will still be made to fragment the country by manipulating its fringe fault lines from the Kurds to Azeris to (Iranian) Arabs to the Baloch.
Were this fragmentation to happen, it would threaten the region in a way different to the fallout from military strikes. The Turks would be horrified with Kurds gaining traction on Iranian soil next to their border. Pakistan wouldn’t want more impetus to Baloch separatism from across its border with Iran. And, as Friday’s suicide attack in Islamabad demonstrated, IS and other sectarian-terrorist groups will get space to stir sectarian violence across the country.
A lot is riding on these talks and all stakeholders will be wishing for a peaceful resolution, despite the Israelis continuing to pressure the US to do what it can’t do itself because its hyped-up murderous military machine is good to mostly kill unarmed Palestinians.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2026
