Officials from the U.S. and Iran are set to meet Saturday in Oman for the highest-level talks on the Islamic Republic’s advancing nuclear program since 2022, a sign of Tehran’s eagerness for sanctions relief and to avoid the crippling military attack that President Donald Trump has threatened.

Each side’s distrust of the other runs deep, even complicating the path to having their emissaries sit down together. Trump has insisted the talks will be “direct,” while Iranian officials just as assertively maintain they’ll be “indirect.”

Although both sides want a deal, there’s a gap between what they want and will accept, raising the odds that Trump will deliver on his warning of an attack on Iran if no compromise comes together. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he’d “absolutely” consider using military action. Israel, he said, would be “very much be involved, the leader of” any military action.

“We don’t have much time because we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “And we’re going to let them thrive, I want Iran to be great. The only thing that they can’t have is a nuclear weapon.”

“Iran has a choice to make: You can agree to his demand, or there’ll be hell to pay,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added Friday.

Tensions have risen since Israel’s multifront war against Iranian proxy militias began 18 months ago, a conflict that’s included Iran and Israel — the U.S.’s main ally in the Middle East — twice firing missiles at each other. The U.S. has also been striking the Houthis in Yemen daily since mid-March in a bid to stop that Iran-backed group’s ship attacks in the Red Sea. The U.S. assaults, Trump has said, are also designed to send a message to Iran.

The bad blood between the two sides dates back to Trump’s previous term. He withdrew in 2018 from a multinational deal intended to restrain Iran’s nuclear program and imposed crushing sanctions. Two years later, he ordered a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the favorite general of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“It’s very clear that the messaging from the Iranian side and to an extent the United States is to downplay expectations” for a quick breakthrough, said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Tehran is likely to make a deal if the U.S. agrees to lift nuclear-related sanctions and respects the Islamic Republic’s right to enrich uranium, in line with the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, according to Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team. That bedrock agreement that prohibits weapons development.

In return, Iran will probably accept curbs on its uranium enrichment and a guarantee that it won’t try to weaponize its nuclear work, said Mousavian, who’s now a Middle East nuclear and security policy specialist at Princeton University.

Steven Witkoff, the U.S. envoy to the talks, told the Wall Street Journal that the initial talks will be “about trust-building” and that the opening demand will be for Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. But he added that negotiations might lead to a compromise that would let Iran keep the program with limits to ensure it won’t produce weapons. “Where our red line will be, there can’t be weaponization of your nuclear capability,” Witkoff told the Journal.

Sanctions’ toll

Iran desperately wants sanctions relief. Its economy is struggling with inflation running at around 30%, according to the International Monetary Fund, and a currency that has lost almost 95% of its value against the dollar since Trump abandoned the nuclear deal, reached under President Barack Obama, and expanded sanctions.

“The Iranians are weaker than they have been probably at any moment since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow in foreign and defense policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. But getting a deal “depends on what Trump asks for, and the Iranians will do their best to whittle down what they have to give.”

Although Iran has decades of experience adapting to trade restrictions and financial isolation, a major fuel and power crisis last winter showed the devastating effects of its lack of investment in infrastructure. President Masoud Pezeshkian has so far failed to win the sanctions relief that he promised to pursue when he took office last July.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a Washington Post op-ed this week that Iran wants investment from around the world, touting it as a “trillion-dollar opportunity.”

On Wednesday, Pezeshkian said Iran is prepared to provide “any necessary guarantees” that it’s not interested in developing a nuclear weapon. The question is whether the U.S. would be willing to accept such assurances despite the likely staunch opposition to any compromise from its ally Israel.

“The ball is now in America’s court,” Araghchi said in his op-ed. “If it seeks a genuine diplomatic resolution, we have already shown the way. If, instead, it seeks to impose its will through pressure, it must know this: The Iranian people respond decisively to the language of force and threat in a unified way.”

Although the Islamic Republic insists its nuclear program is purely for peaceful ends, experts point out that it’s now producing the equivalent of one bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium a month. And whatever the outcome of negotiations, it will be impossible to erase the knowledge that Iranian scientists gained working on the nuclear program, underlining the importance of enforcing any deal.

Rather than checking Iran’s ambitions, China and Russia have built new supply chains in recent years to foster trade. The three countries last month held joint military drills near the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit bottleneck that Iran has threatened to close if there’s a conflict with the U.S.

This weekend’s meeting is taking place as the runway for a diplomatic solution rapidly shortens. International Atomic Energy Agency investigators have been ordered to publish a special report by June on alleged Iranian violations of its obligation to fully declare nuclear activities.

That could lead to strict United Nations sanctions being snapped back into place in October, and to Iran withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Still, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters Tuesday that this weekend’s meeting isn’t an actual negotiation but rather a conversation for “determining what’s possible” if the nations do enter into formal talks.

“Iran’s goal is to come out of the conversation showing its intent to continue negotiations,” predicted Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House in London.

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(With assistance from Stephanie Lai and Hadriana Lowenkron.)

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