Iran’s top diplomat says talks with US deeply intense
The fate of millions hangs on whispers in Geneva. On Thursday, Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, sat across an empty room from the United States, speaking not directly to his adversaries, but through an Omani mediator. After hours of what he called the “most intense and longest rounds of negotiations,” both sides simply got up and left. No handshake. No deal.
For the people of the Middle East, this silence is the sound of held breath. The United States has amassed a terrifying armada of aircraft and warships just over the horizon. A fleet that usually sits quietly in Bahraini ports has vanished into the open sea—sailors bracing for an order that could come at any moment.
Araghchi knows what is at stake. The night before flying to Geneva, he looked into a camera and painted a picture of apocalypse. It is a very terrible scenario.”
He wasn’t just talking about troop movements or strategic assets. He was talking about families in Tehran, in Tel Aviv, in Baghdad—people who have already lived through decades of conflict, wondering if their homes will be next.
Inside the negotiation room, the gap between the two sides feels like an ocean. Before talks even concluded, Iranian state television broadcast its government’s hardline stance: Iran will continue enriching uranium, it will not ship its stockpile abroad, and it demands the immediate lifting of economic sanctions that are crushing ordinary citizens. For the man on the street in Tehran, this isn’t about geopolitics; it’s about whether they can afford bread and medicine.
President Donald Trump, watching from Washington, wants the opposite. He sees a Tehran weakened by internal dissent and believes he can force a deal that scraps not just the nuclear program, but Iran’s missiles and its support for fighters in Gaza and Lebanon.
Yet the fact that the American delegation—led by Trump’s real estate mogul friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner—did not simply walk out offers a fragile thread of hope.
These are the third such talks since last June, when the region last exploded. Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran, and the US carried out heavy strikes that left much of Iran’s nuclear program in ruins. The full extent of that damage remains a closely guarded secret, but satellite photos analyzed by the AP show activity at the bombed sites—technicians picking through rubble, trying to salvage what remains.
Iran insists it does not want a bomb. But since Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal, the country has enriched uranium up to 60% purity—a short technical step from the 90% needed for a weapon. US intelligence agencies admit Iran hasn’t restarted weapons development, but warn they have “undertaken activities that better position it” to do so quickly.
The mediator, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, tried to strike an optimistic note, announcing “significant progress” and that technical talks would continue next week in Vienna. But hope is a fragile commodity here. As the diplomats fly home, the US fleet remains at sea, oil prices tremble near $70 a barrel, and the Strait of Hormuz—through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows—grows quiet with tension.
For now, war has been delayed, but not defeated. The men in suits will talk again. But outside the conference rooms, in the cities and bases across the region, ordinary people are left waiting, wondering if the diplomats’ failure will become their final chapter.