Long read: How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks

The Omani foreign minister’s interview with CBS just hours before the US-Israel attack, in which he emphatically claimed an agreement was being reached at the Geneva talks, will likely go down in history every time the current US-Israel-Iran war is discussed. What was the agreement reached? Why did it not stop the war?

Patrick Wintour writes in The Guardian about two factors symbolic of the Trump administration to policy making – lack of competent team members after Trump got rid of most qualified personnel and a rather cavalier approach to dealings. He begins with this:

“In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.

…The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best.

… When talks resumed in Oman on 6 February, Witkoff, in a breach of protocol and to the surprise of Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, arrived in Muscat with Adm Brad Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, in full naval uniform. Witkoff’s explanation was that “he just happened to be in the neighbourhood”.

Cooper was politely asked to leave the talks by his Omani hosts.

…One Gulf diplomat, who has direct knowledge of the talks and is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behaviour, described the pair as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of”.”

Then the technical competence of Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to lead the negotiations: “Witkoff does not pretend to regional expertise – in one of his recent interviews he referred to the strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz”. Similarly, he admitted in an interview that his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear programme was sketchy…

…Those involved in the negotiations say misunderstandings about how Iran’s complex nuclear programme worked – including, for instance, the purpose and uranium needs of the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), the scope of Iran’s planned future nuclear programme, and the offer for US firms to be involved in Iran’s economy – all contributed to the march to war.

… Katariina Simonen, adjunct professor at the Finnish national defence university, said: “The Trump administration is very impenetrable. It is a closed circle. The US arms control community has been at pains to offer real expert advice on nuclear physics, but the Trump team does not seem interested. Probably the biggest frustration is that this deal would have allowed the IAEA back into Iran, and so many issues could then have been resolved.””

If the agreement was real, why weren’t the details made public to prevent the war?

“Iran has to take some responsibility. It has never published its seven-page written offer for a new deal, including the annexe, which was shown to Witkoff during the final round of talks in Geneva, despite calls from inside Iran to do so.

…It may also have been a mistake not to allow Witkoff to keep a copy of the offer, since he could at least have shown it to technically more competent officials in Washington. Witkoff would later describe their reticence to hand over the document as a “tell” that they were not interested in a deal and were just playing for time.

However, Kelsey Davenport, the director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association (ACA), said it was understandable the Iranians did not want to hand over their negotiating position given Trump’s record of publishing confidential material on his Truth Social web platform.”

But now some details of the plan are emerging:

“A plan for a US-led regional enrichment consortium, which had been central to the previous round of talks, had gone. A broad agreement was made for the return of full International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. Under IAEA monitoring and verification, Iran would get rid of its stockpile of 440kg of uranium already enriched to 60%. The stockpile, now thought to be under the rubble of the Fordow plant, would not be exported abroad, as had been proposed in the past, but down-blended, a process recognised as largely irreversible…

…The biggest roadblock was that Iran refused to abandon its insistence on the right to enrich uranium for its future nuclear programme, and this would require eventually being allowed to run 30 centrifuges, far fewer than at present. The threat they posed depended on the quality of the inspection regime. Iran accepted that due to the destruction of their Fordow and Natanz enrichment plants there would be a multiyear pause in enrichment. On the final day of talks in Geneva, Iran offered a three-to-five-year moratorium, taking the pause past the end of the Trump presidency, but after a phone consultation with Trump during a lunchtime break, Witkoff came back insisting on 10 years. The US said it would pay for nuclear fuel to be imported over that decade.

By that final day – two days before the US and Israel launched their attack – the two negotiating teams had also reached agreement on the lifting of 80% of the sanctions imposed on Iran…”

Then the Omani foreign minister’s last attempt to prevent the war:

“Once the Geneva talks ended, with both sides only signing up to a statement about progress made, it was obvious to the Omani foreign minister that war was imminent, and he dashed to Washington to explain how close he felt the the two sides were to a breakthrough.

The dash across the Atlantic reflected Oman’s belief that Witkoff and Kushner, either knowingly or through ignorance, were not feeding Trump the truth about the progress in the talks. There was also doubt about Trump’s focus. One previous attempt to engage Trump on the status of the talks deteriorated when the president switched the conversation to one of his favourite topics: shoes .”

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