Trump signals pessimism on Iran talks while Oman claims nuclear breakthrough

Donald Trump left the White House on Friday with a message for reporters: the nuclear talks with Iran were not going well. He was, by his own account, "not happy" with how the Iranian negotiators were conducting themselves across three rounds of discussions in Geneva. Yet when asked directly whether he had authorized a military strike against the Islamic Republic, he stopped short of a definitive answer. "We haven't made a final decision," he said. "I don't want to, but sometimes you have to."

The President's frustration centered on what he saw as Iran's refusal to make an unequivocal commitment. He claimed Tehran would not say the words he wanted to hear: "no nuclear weapon." The reality on the ground was more complicated. Iranian officials had in fact made such statements repeatedly in recent days, though they insisted simultaneously on their right to enrich uranium for civilian, medical, and economic purposes. The United States and Israel—which had conducted a major bombing campaign against Iranian targets in June—remained deeply skeptical of these assurances. By Friday afternoon, as Trump traveled to Texas, his tone had grown darker. The Iranians, he told reporters, simply "don't want to quite go far enough."

Trump's stated position had hardened considerably. He declared he wanted no uranium enrichment at all—not at 20 percent, not at 30 percent, none. He argued that Iran, as an oil-rich nation, had no genuine need for a civilian nuclear energy program and therefore no legitimate reason to enrich. "I think it's uncivil," he said of the Iranian position. It was unclear whether this represented a new red line or merely public posturing, since his own negotiators had reportedly shown flexibility on allowing Iran to enrich uranium at very low levels. The gap between what Trump was saying publicly and what his team might accept privately remained a source of tension.

Behind the scenes, according to a source briefed on internal White House discussions, pessimism was spreading. Officials recognized that confronting Iran would prove far more difficult than the recent capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The source was blunt: "Nobody is super optimistic about the negotiations." Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was preparing to travel to Israel on Monday and Tuesday to coordinate with a country that could become a co-combatant in any American strike and would certainly face Iranian retaliation. Rubio had already declared Iran a "state sponsor of wrongful detention" and was moving to invalidate U.S. passports for travel there—a restriction previously applied only to North Korea—citing the country's imprisonment of American citizens as political leverage.

Yet on the same Friday, a different narrative was emerging from Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who had brokered all three rounds of talks. After meeting with Vice President JD Vance to brief him on progress, Albusaidi announced what he called a genuine breakthrough: Iran had agreed never to stockpile enriched uranium. This was, he insisted, something that had never been achieved in any previous negotiation. The mechanism would work like this: Iran would enrich uranium only as needed for immediate use, degrade its current stockpiles to the lowest possible level, and convert that material into fuel in a way that could not be reversed. "This really makes the enrichment argument less relevant," Albusaidi told CBS's "Face the Nation," "because now we are talking about zero stockpiling." Without the ability to accumulate enriched material, he reasoned, Iran could not build a bomb.

Albusaidi projected confidence that a comprehensive deal could be reached within three months, with all outstanding issues resolved "amicably and comprehensively." He tweeted a photograph from his meeting with Vance with the caption: "Peace is within our reach." On the question of Iran's ballistic missiles—a demand that Rubio had made central to any agreement—Albusaidi said he believed Iran was open to discussing everything. The context mattered: thousands had been killed just last month when Iranian authorities crushed mass anti-regime protests, the most serious challenge to the ruling clerics since the 1979 revolution. American forces were massing in the region at levels not seen in years. Multiple countries had issued travel warnings and ordered embassy staff to leave.

The fundamental tension was temporal. Albusaidi was asking for patience—three months to build on the breakthrough and finalize terms. Trump, by contrast, had made clear he wanted a deal "now." The administration had not yet publicly committed to attending the next round of technical talks scheduled for Vienna the following week, a silence that fueled speculation that military action might come sooner rather than later. Trump had already threatened strikes twice in recent weeks: first over the violent suppression of the protests, then over the nuclear program itself. Whether the breakthrough Albusaidi was touting would be enough to change the President's calculus remained the central unanswered question.