Sawt Falasteen - Iran says 'good progress' in US talks, next round within a week

The Oman-mediated negotiations follow repeated threats from Donald Trump to strike Iran, with the US president last Thursday giving Tehran 15 days to reach a deal.

While Iran has insisted the discussions focus solely on its nuclear programme, the US wants Tehran's missile programme and its support for militant groups in the region curtailed.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV that the talks "made very good progress and entered into the elements of an agreement very seriously, both in the nuclear field and in the sanctions field".

He said the next round would take place in "perhaps less than a week", with technical talks at the UN's nuclear agency to begin in Vienna on Monday.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi also announced technical discussions were to be held "next week in Vienna".

"We have finished the day after significant progress in the negotiation between the United States and Iran," he said in a post on X.

The negotiations took place as the US continued its largest military buildup in the Middle East in decades.

The US and Iranian delegations held a morning session at the Omani ambassador's residence amid tight security, before pausing to hold consultations with their respective capitals.

A second session began around 1700 GMT.

Albusaidi said after the morning session that the two sides expressed "unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solutions".

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi joined the negotiations, a source close to the talks told AFP, with an Iranian state TV journalist also reporting he was attending.

- Dramatic buildup -

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Trump's negotiating team would demand that Iran dismantle its three main nuclear sites and hand over all its remaining enriched uranium to the United States.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted ahead of the talks that the Islamic republic was not "at all" seeking a nuclear weapon.

As part of the dramatic US buildup, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier, sent to the Mediterranean this week, left a naval base in Crete on Thursday, an AFP photographer said.

Washington currently has more than a dozen warships in the Middle East: one aircraft carrier -- the USS Abraham Lincoln -- nine destroyers and three other combat ships.

It is rare for there to be two US aircraft carriers, which carry dozens of warplanes and are crewed by thousands of sailors, in the region.

The developments follow massive protests in Iran during which, rights groups say, thousands of demonstrators were killed.

- 'Sinister nuclear ambitions' -

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump accused Iran of "pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions", though Tehran has always insisted its programme is for civilian purposes.

Trump also claimed Tehran had "already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America".

The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims "big lies".

The maximum range of Iran's missiles is 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles), according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed.

However, the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000 kilometres -- less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.

Trump's State of the Union accusations in Congress were delivered in the same forum in which then-president George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

- 'People would suffer' -

Araghchi, who led the Iranian delegation at the talks, had called them "a historic opportunity", adding that a deal was "within reach".

The US was represented by envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka.

A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

In January, Tehran launched a mass crackdown on nationwide protests that posed one of the greatest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.

Protests have since resumed around Iranian universities.

Tehran residents who spoke to AFP were divided on what renewed conflict would mean for them.

"There would be famine and people would suffer a lot. People are suffering now, but at least with war, our fate might be clear," 60-year-old homemaker Tayebeh said.

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D.Khalil--SF-PST