Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will travel to Ankara for talks aimed at preventing a US attack, as Turkish diplomats seek to convince Tehran it must offer concessions over its nuclear programme if it is to avert a potentially devastating conflict.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proposed a video conference between US president Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian – the kind of high-wire diplomacy that may appeal to the US leader, but would be anathema to circumspect Iranian diplomats.
No formal direct talks have been held between the two countries for a decade.
Mr Araghchi’s visit on Friday comes against the backdrop of urgent international diplomacy and increasingly aggressive threats from both sides.
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Elsewhere on Thursday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military will be prepared to carry out whatever Mr Trump decides on Iran to ensure Tehran does not pursue nuclear weapons capability.
With a large US military force gathered in the region, Mr Hegseth was asked by Mr Trump at a cabinet meeting to comment on the situation.
“They should not pursue nuclear capabilities. We will be prepared to deliver whatever this president expects of the war department,” Mr Hegseth said, referring to the Trump administration’s unofficial renaming of the US defence department.
Senior defence and intelligence officials from Israel and Saudi Arabia were also in Washington for talks on Iran this week, Axios reported on Thursday.
Mr Trump has warned Iran that time is running out, vowing that any US attack would be violent and far more extensive than the US intervention in Venezuela.
US officials say Mr Trump is reviewing his options but has not decided whether to strike Iran. US-Iranian tensions soared following a bloody crackdown on protests across Iran by its clerical authorities in recent weeks.
Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if Iran continued to kill protesters, but the countrywide demonstrations over economic privations and political repression have since abated.
He has said the US would act if Tehran resumed its nuclear program after the June air strikes by Israeli and US forces on key nuclear installations.
Iran has remained defiant, with army chief Maj Gen Amir Hatami announcing that since the 12-day war in June, Iran has revised tactics and built 1,000 sea and land-based drones. He said the drones and Iran’s extensive ballistic missile arsenal could provide a crushing response to any attack. Iran’s greatest military weakness is its air defences.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said on Wednesday that around 30,000 US military personnel were “within the reach of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs and Iranian short-range ballistic missiles”.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was “preparing itself for a military confrontation, while at the same time making use of diplomatic channels”.
The Kremlin urged both sides to recognise there was still time for diplomacy, but Turkey appears to have taken up the mantle of the main mediator, as an increasingly apprehensive Middle East eyes a looming conflict that could easily spread across the region.
Inside Iran, those voices that have called for authorities to make concessions are being drowned out in an increasingly polarised society, in which one section is demanding the leadership stand up to the United States, and another is intent on provoking the regime’s collapse.
In an attempt to bind a wounded society back together, Mr Pezeshkian, has acknowledged the anger over the suppression of the protests by saying a full list of those killed in the ensuing government crackdown will be published in conjunction with grieving families.
But such is the current level of distrust inside Iran, and the power of the security services, that it is doubtful Mr Pezeshkian will be able to convince Iranians or international observers that the death toll was not in the tens of thousands.
Mr Trump has not clearly stated his objectives but then this week linking his threats to the country’s nuclear programme. The US leader appears to be using the possibility of strikes on Iran’s missile sites as well as groups such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to imply that he intends to trigger collapse of the regime, or at least the resignation of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He claimed to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear programme during the 12-day war in June, although US intelligence agencies later gave conflicting assessments of the campaign’s impact.
Addressing US Congress on Wednesday, Mr Rubio was cautious regarding the prospect of a change in government. “You’re talking about a regime that’s been in place for a very long time,” he said. “So that’s going to require a lot of careful thinking, if that eventuality ever presents itself.”
Iran’s former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi called for the regime to stand aside, saying: “Enough is enough. The game is over.”
He called for a constitutional referendum, based on the three principles of “non-interference from abroad, rejection of domestic tyranny, and peaceful democratic transition.”
Mr Erdogan spoke with Mr Trump on Monday in what was billed as an attempt to locate common ground between Iran and the US before any deadline for strikes. – Guardian/Reuters
