The fourth round of conversations between Iran and the United States about the Iranian nuclear program, which should be held in Rome this Saturday, has been postponed without date after Wednesday, Washington announced additional sanctions to companies related to Iranian oil exports. The Donald Trump administration has justified these new punishment measures – which add up to a hard battery of restrictions that the Iranian economy has suffocated for years – referring to Tehran’s support. This Friday, Iran has also announced the cancellation of an encounter with representatives of three European powers, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, also planned in the Italian capital.
The postponement sine the of the negotiations that had presided over the three negotiating rounds maintained so far between Washington and Tehran to try to get a new agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. With a meeting in Oman, the mediating country. That meeting was the first publicly recognized between the United States and Iran since the Donald Trump administration left seven years ago, in the first mandate of the Republican, a transcendental pact on the nuclear program achieved in 2015.
The joint comprehensive action plan () – between Iran, United States, three European powers (France, the United Kingdom and Germany), in addition to Russia and China -, forced Tehran to limit its uranium enrichment program and submit it to strict international supervision to ensure that it would not manufacture atomic weapons. In return, Tehran obtained a progressive relief from international sanctions until, in 2018, Trump abandoned him unilaterally and restored US punishment measures against the Iranian economy.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, confirmed Thursday night on the social network X that the fourth round of nuclear dialogue with Washington had been postponed. “Together with the Omani and American interlocutors, we have decided to postpone the fourth round of conversations for logistical and technical reasons,” said the head of the Tehran diplomacy, headed by the political delegation of his country in the negotiations that have elapsed in Mascate, the capital of Oman, and Rome, although always under Omaní mediation.
Araghchi said later that “by Iran, there are no changes” in his “determination to achieve a negotiated solution.” The minister then stressed that his country is “more determined than ever to achieve a fair and balanced agreement: to guarantee the end of the sanctions and create confidence that Iran’s nuclear program will always be peaceful”, while ensuring that “Iranian rights are fully respected.”
Also the head of the Omaní diplomacy, Badr al Busaidi, attributed on Thursday the postponement of conversations to “logistics reasons.” After the third round of contacts on Saturday, April 26, the Sultanato released a statement in which he announced a new meeting between Iran and the United States this Saturday, May 3. However, a state department spokesman later assured that Washington had not confirmed his participation in a fourth meeting and sent his celebration to an inaccurate “near future.”
An Iranian official pointed out on Thursday under anonymity, to that same news agency, which the new date for the fourth negotiating round will be set “depending on the United States approach.” Then he explicitly alluded to “US sanctions to Iran during nuclear conversations are not helping the parties to solve the nuclear dispute through diplomacy.”
On Wednesday, Washington imposed sanctions on several entities that he accused of participating in the illicit trade of oil and Iranian petrochemical products. This same Friday, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury has published a series of “measures against a network of financial facilitators and supply agents [de los] Hutíes who work in coordination with Sa’id al-Jamal, a senior Hutí financial official backed by the body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran ”.
Washington has allied from Iran that, after the unilateral rupture of the Alto in Fuego in Gaza by Israel, has attacked merchant ships in the Red Sea.
After the announcement of the new sanctions, Iran accused the United States of “contradictory behavior and provocative statements.”
Israel pressures
Iran has faced the nuclear negotiation on which the relief of the sanctions that drown to its economy depends – the official inflation fact, which is considered undervalued, is around 35% per year – with a red line: the. The Iranian delegation also sits to the dialogue table in the midst of threats, repeated by Trump, that if a commitment is not reached, the United States will bombar will go or support Israel to do so.
Without being ruled out, that maximalist demand, expressed by senior officials of the Trump administration, seemed to have been parked as the first three meetings occurred. The third, which had also been postponed since the previous Wednesday, also passed in parallel to the first meeting between the technical delegations of both countries. That same day, in the city of Bandar Abás, which killed at least 40 people and wounded about 1,200.
What is known as “Libyan scenario”; That is, the complete dismantling of the nuclear program – as happened since 2003 in the Libya of Colonel Muamar Gaddafi – is the scenario preferred by Israel, which has shown its displeasure by the nuclear negotiation between the United States and its regional nemesis.
On April 27, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu alluded to the Libyan stage and insisted that the agreement should ensure the “dismantling” of the Iranian nuclear program and its ability to enrich Uranium. Iranian Foreign Minister replied to that statement pointing out that those words “were out of reality.”
The Trump administration has sometimes supported that Israeli demand, while other times, its senior officials and the president himself have affirmed that Tehran would guarantee that he will not manufacture atomic weapons. On Thursday, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that Iran should not enrich uranium and that he would have to just buy that enriched mineral that feeds them to other countries if he wants to have civil nuclear centrals.
