The fifth round of indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States will take place on May 23, according to Oman’s foreign minister.
Officials from Iran and the United States will hold another round of talks in Rome on Friday, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi has said, despite the growing gap between the two countries over uranium enrichment.
Wednesday’s confirmation that the nuclear negotiations would continue comes after days of Washington and Tehran expressing irreconcilable positions on Iranian uranium enrichment.
US officials have said they want Iran not just to scale back its nuclear programme, but also to stop enriching uranium altogether — a position that Tehran has said is a nonstarter.
Enrichment is the process of altering the uranium atom to create nuclear fuel.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also said on Tuesday that his country does not need US permission to enrich uranium.
“Saying things like ‘We will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is nonsense,” he was quoted as saying by the Mehr News Agency.
His statement was in response to the US’s lead negotiator, Steve Witkoff, dubbing uranium enrichment a “red line” and saying that Washington “cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability”.
Several Iranian and US officials have reiterated their respective countries’ positions.
Washington has said Iran can operate nuclear reactors for energy production by importing already enriched uranium, arguing that the domestic uranium production by Tehran risks potential weaponisation.
Iran, which denies seeking a nuclear weapon, says uranium enrichment for civilian purposes is its right as a sovereign nation.
Israel, the top US ally in the Middle East, is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with military action if the two countries do not reach a deal, stressing that he will not allow Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
During his first term, in 2018, Trump nixed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against its economy.
Since then, the US has been piling sanctions on the Iranian economy.
After his return to the White House for a second term in January, Trump renewed his “maximum pressure” programme against Iran, largely through economic penalties. He has, for example, pledged to choke off the country’s oil exports, particularly to China.
Iran has been defiant in the face of Trump’s threats, promising to defend itself against any attack.