A discreet round of talks in Muscat has left Tehran publicly defiant and privately reassured by its closer ties with Moscow and Beijing. Iran’s foreign minister, Araghchi, emerged from the closed-door meeting to tell cameras that Tehran will not accept a demand for “zero enrichment” of uranium and that any agreement must rest on “mutual respect and shared interests.” The message was blunt: enrichment is a legal right under the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and not negotiable as a concession.
The Muscat talks were run in two phases, with Oman acting as intermediary: Tehran and Washington submitted written positions in advance, then delegates were placed in separate rooms while the Omani foreign minister shuttled messages. That format underlines how little direct trust there is between the two sides and places a premium on perceived sincerity — a commodity Iran argues was lacking given continuing sanctions and military pressure from the United States.
Tehran also used the post‑talk window to telegraph its readiness for a harder line. State media highlighted the unveiling of a new ballistic missile, the Khorramshahr‑4, reportedly capable of reaching up to 2,000km and carrying a large warhead. Iran’s military leadership declared the air force at its highest alert level and warned that any U.S. use of force would be met with force, adding that U.S. bases across the Middle East would be legitimate targets in such a scenario.
Those signals prompted an immediate reaction in Jerusalem. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington to press for a deal that would remove enriched uranium from Iran and impose strict curbs on its missile program. Israeli analysts fear that even a limited conflict between Washington and Tehran would prompt Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, to launch missile and drone attacks against Israeli territory, complicating any effort to contain escalation.
Beyond immediate contagion risk, Tehran’s negotiators are framing the talks as a chess game within a broader U.S. strategy targeting China’s energy lifelines. U.S. negotiators reportedly floated proposals to sharply reduce Iran’s oil exports to China — a demand Tehran views as proof that Washington’s true aim is to sever Beijing’s alternative energy sources rather than merely to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.
That narrative links recent U.S. pressure on Venezuela’s oil sector with an alleged playbook aimed at denying China and Russia reliable energy supplies. For Iran, the result is a clearer logic for deepening consultation with Moscow and Beijing ahead of or alongside talks with Washington. Tehran’s briefing of China and Russia after Muscat suggests Iran believes a deal acceptable to it must be backed by great‑power political cover.
The immediate outcome is a stalemate with a high risk of escalation. Iran’s red lines — preservation of enrichment rights, exclusion of missile and regional influence from the negotiating table, and no military actors in diplomatic talks — shrink the range of compromise. Washington faces a choice: accept an agreement that recognizes limited enrichment and tolerates Iran’s strategic partnerships, or ratchet up pressure and risk a conflict that would reverberate across the Middle East and into global energy markets.