How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks

Original article by Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.

The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best.

But it was symptomatic of the unorthodox way in which Kushner and Witkoff approached the nuclear talks that stretched through last year and this, and have twice been halted by Israeli and US airstrikes.

One Gulf diplomat, who has direct knowledge of the talks and is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behaviour, described the pair as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of”.

Witkoff does not pretend to regional expertise – in one of his recent interviews he referred to the strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz”. Similarly, he admitted in an interview that his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear programme was sketchy, but insisted he “was competent to discuss it since he had studied it”.

Yet, in the five sessions of the first round of talks last year – held before the 12-day June war – Witkoff rarely took notes and brought with him only Michael Anton, a hawkish essayist and political philosopher with no specialism in the Iran nuclear file. Anton was supposed to have an unnamed technical team back in Washington, and at times, as in May 2025, they could produce hard-core technical demands, but this level of expertise was never in the talks.

When talks resumed in Oman on 6 February, Witkoff, in a breach of protocol and to the surprise of Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, arrived in Muscat with Adm Brad Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, in full naval uniform. Witkoff’s explanation was that “he just happened to be in the neighbourhood”.

Cooper was politely asked to leave the talks by his Omani hosts.

In contrast, the Obama administration sent 10 senior officials from four different departments to talks with Iran in Vienna in 2009. The talks stretched over, in effect, three 24-hour days, and the negotiators were in constant touch with Washington to check details of the proposed deal.

Quite why these indirect talks failed is not just a matter of historical curiosity, or a retrospective exercise in allocating blame for the start of such a disastrous war; it is relevant to whether a nuclear deal only is feasible or whether a broader agreement will be necessary now.

This matters because after the war, if Iran’s government survives, calls inside inside the country to obtain a nuclear weapon will inevitably grow. Last week’s purported statement from the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, made no reference to whether the fatwa banning the use of nuclear weapons set out by his late father remained in place. Protesters outside the foreign ministry in Tehran have demanded no return to talks with America.

Those involved in the negotiations say misunderstandings about how Iran’s complex nuclear programme worked – including, for instance, the purpose and uranium needs of the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), the scope of Iran’s planned future nuclear programme, and the offer for US firms to be involved in Iran’s economy – all contributed to the march to war.

Witkoff also compressed the time available so that on 17 February he also held talks with Ukraine, allowing just three-and-a-half hours for the Iranians. Since, at the Iranians’ behest, these talks were being conducted indirectly, the exchanges were frustratingly short.

The Iranians now say they believe the talks were always a subterfuge, designed to create space for the US to assemble its military armada. Witkoff, for his part, said the Iranians were being “deceptive”, “full of subterfuge” and “smelled fishy”.

One Gulf diplomat said: “Greater time and expertise would not have guaranteed an agreement, but it would have helped. What I will say is that in all the explanations of what went on, it is the Iranians that have normally been telling the truth.”

The Geneva offer

Iran has to take some responsibility. It has never published its seven-page written offer for a new deal, including the annexe, which was shown to Witkoff during the final round of talks in Geneva, despite calls from inside Iran to do so. Araghchi has said he hoped the truth of what happened on the final day of talks, 26 February, would soon become known. He could do this himself by publishing Iran’s offer – one that Jonathan Powell, the UK national security adviser who was present at the talks, thought worth pursuing. Kushner admitted a deal could have been presented that was better than the Obama nuclear deal secured in 2015.

It may also have been a mistake not to allow Witkoff to keep a copy of the offer, since he could at least have shown it to technically more competent officials in Washington. Witkoff would later describe their reticence to hand over the document as a “tell” that they were not interested in a deal, and were just playing for time.

However, Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association (ACA), said it was understandable the Iranians did not want to hand over their negotiating position given Trump’s record of publishing confidential material on his Truth Social web platform.

“If I were Iran, I’d assume that Trump would share details of the negotiations on Truth Social and with [Benjamin] Netanyahu and there would be even more concerted pressure from the Israelis to undermine the diplomatic process,” Davenport said. “So I’m not surprised that Iran didn’t want to share.”

But the kernel of what was proposed in Geneva is slowly emerging. British officials briefed on its contents thought it was a good deal, and something to be built on, partly because, unlike the 2015 nuclear deal, there were no sunset clauses.

A plan for a US-led regional enrichment consortium, which had been central to the previous round of talks, had gone. A broad agreement was made for the return of full International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. Under IAEA monitoring and verification, Iran would get rid of its stockpile of 440kg of uranium already enriched to 60%. The stockpile, now thought to be under the rubble of the Fordow plant, would not be exported abroad, as had been proposed in the past, but down-blended, a process recognised as largely irreversible..

The biggest roadblock was that Iran refused to abandon its insistence on the right to enrich uranium for its future nuclear programme, and this would require eventually being allowed to run 30 centrifuges, far fewer than at present. The threat they posed depended on the quality of the inspection regime. Iran accepted that due to the destruction of their Fordow and Natanz enrichment plants there would be a multiyear pause in enrichment. On the final day of talks in Geneva, Iran offered a three-to-five-year moratorium, taking the pause past the end of the Trump presidency, but after a phone consultation with Trump during a lunchtime break, Witkoff came back insisting on 10 years. The US said it would pay for nuclear fuel to be imported over that decade.

By that final day – two days before the US and Israel launched their attack – the two negotiating teams had also reached agreement on the lifting of 80% of the sanctions imposed on Iran, a source involved in the talks said. Oman said at least three more months were needed to work on the details.

It was certainly closer than the maximalist US demands on 29 May last year, a fortnight before Israel launched the 12-day war on Iran on 13 June.

Before the final talks, Iran again allowed it to be known that the US would face a “commercial bonanza” if it signed up to the deal. Hamid Ghanbari, a deputy foreign minister, told Iranian businesspeople this month that “common interests in the fields of oil and gas, including joint fields [with neighbouring countries], as well as investments in mining and even the purchase of civilian aircraft, have been included in the talks with the US”.

Once the Geneva talks ended, with both sides only signing up to a statement about progress made, it was obvious to the Omani foreign minister that war was imminent, and he dashed to Washington to explain how close he felt the the two sides were to a breakthrough. But his proposal of zero stockpiling did not have the same force as zero enrichment.

The dash across the Atlantic reflected Oman’s belief that Witkoff and Kushner, either knowingly or through ignorance, were not feeding Trump the truth about the progress in the talks. There was also doubt about Trump’s focus. One previous attempt to engage Trump on the status of the talks deteriorated when the president switched the conversation to one of his favourite topics: shoes. In retrospect it might have been better to send a more senior emissary to try to hold Trump’s attention. A day later the war started.

‘So many issues could have been resolved’

Since the war started, Witkoff has claimed Iran suffered a “Perry Mason moment” in the talks when it was revealed to have been caught secretly stockpiling highly enriched uranium at its research reactor. This evidence, however, has long been in the public domain.

US briefings since the outbreak of hostilities have also revealed inconsistencies in whether the Iranian ballistic missile programme was a red line that had to be included in the talks.

Katariina Simonen, adjunct professor at the Finnish national defence university, said: “The Trump administration is very impenetrable. It is a closed circle. The US arms control community has been at pains to offer real expert advice on nuclear physics, but the Trump team does not seem interested. Probably the biggest frustration is that this deal would have allowed the IAEA back into Iran, and so many issues could then have been resolved.”