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Gideon Levy
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Trump’s new talks with Iran could end in a deal — or a war
American negotiators are headed to Oman this weekend for a round of high-level talks with Iran over its nuclear program. President Donald Trump dropped the surprise announcement Tuesday during his Oval Office meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. (Netanyahu was reportedly surprised by the news as well, one of a number of disappointments for the Israeli prime minister at the meeting.)
“We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump said. In an apparent reference to the possibility of military strikes on Iran, he added, “I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with or, frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it.”
The prospect of Israeli or US military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities has loomed over the region for years, but has seemed somewhat more likely over the past few months. Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons grade uranium has dramatically grown — meaning the regime is closer than ever to an actual weapon. Israel, meanwhile, feels emboldened after the remarkable military success it has had against Iranian proxies since the October 7, 2023, attacks, not to mention its successful strikes on Iran itself. Trump said on Wednesday that if military strikes do take place, Israel would be the “leader.”
The US has been making aggressive moves as well. Its ongoing strikes against the Houthis in Yemen have been widely seen as a warning to the group’s Iranian patrons about the Trump administration’s willingness to use force, as was the recent decision to relocate a third of America’s stealth bomber fleet to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, within range of Iran.
On the other hand, there are indications that Trump is serious about making a deal. In a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in March, Trump gave Iran a two-month deadline to meet an agreement — a clock that apparently starts ticking after this weekend’s talks. And Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appears more open to talks than his more hardline predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a plane crash........
© Vox
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