U.S. and Iran Report ‘Significant Progress’ in Indirect Nuclear Talks in Geneva

In a cream-colored villa tucked behind high hedges near Lake Geneva, American and Iranian envoys spent Thursday trading messages through Omani go-betweens they still refuse to meet in person.

By late evening on Feb. 26, they had no deal to announce. But in a rare point of agreement, all three governments used the same phrase to describe the outcome: “significant progress.”

The third round of indirect talks this month between the United States and Iran on curbing Tehran’s nuclear program ended without a formal agreement but with a pledge to keep negotiating. The fragile opening comes as U.S. warships crowd Middle Eastern waters, Washington warns that military force remains an option, and financial markets price in what traders call a war premium on oil.

Diplomats involved say the Geneva meetings, held at Omani diplomatic facilities, moved further than previous rounds toward sketching out a package that would trade tighter limits on Iran’s enrichment of uranium for some relief from U.S. sanctions. Technical experts from both countries are expected to reconvene next week in Vienna with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“This round concluded after significant progress in the negotiation,” Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi wrote on the social media platform X. He said the parties agreed to “resume soon after consultation in the respective capitals” and confirmed that technical-level discussions would take place in Vienna.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led Tehran’s delegation, told state television the talks “made very good progress and entered into the elements of an agreement very seriously, both in the nuclear field and in the sanctions field.” He described them as “one of the most serious talks we had with the U.S.,” despite the fact that the two sides never shared a room.

The U.S. delegation, headed by presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner, characterized the day’s discussions as “intense and constructive,” according to officials briefed on the talks. But they cautioned that key differences remained over how far Iran must roll back its nuclear advances and how much sanctions relief Washington can offer under President Donald Trump’s publicly stated red lines.

Those gaps underline the complexity of trying to rebuild a nuclear bargain nearly a decade after the original deal was signed — and less than a year after U.S. bombs struck some of Iran’s most sensitive facilities.

Old framework, harder problem

The basic trade under discussion in Geneva follows the broad model of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA: Iran would accept verifiable limits on its nuclear program, and the United States would ease some of the sanctions that have cut off much of Iran’s oil exports and banking system.

Under the JCPOA, Iran capped uranium enrichment at 3.67%, kept its stockpile to 300 kilograms and agreed to intrusive IAEA inspections designed to stretch the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade material for one bomb to at least a year. In May 2018, Trump withdrew from that agreement and reimposed U.S. sanctions, arguing the deal was too weak and too narrow.

Iran responded by gradually breaching those limits. By mid-2025, the IAEA reported that Tehran had accumulated roughly 440 to 450 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity — far above civilian reactor levels and close to the 90% generally considered weapons grade — along with larger stocks of lower-enriched material. Western experts said that stockpile, if further enriched, was enough for several nuclear weapons.

Then came the June 2025 conflict sometimes described as the “Twelve-Day War.” After Israel launched large-scale airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, the United States hit three key nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — in an operation aimed at setting back Iran’s enrichment capacity. Iran responded with missiles and drones targeting Israel and a U.S. base in Qatar.

U.S. officials later said the strikes delayed Iran’s program by months to as much as two years. Iranian leaders acknowledged serious damage but vowed to rebuild, and they curtailed IAEA access to the bombed facilities. In recent confidential reports, the agency has said it can no longer verify either the status of enrichment at those sites or the total size of Iran’s stockpile.

That opacity shapes every conversation now happening in Geneva and Vienna. Unlike in 2015, negotiators do not have a full, independently verified picture of what Iran has or how quickly it could move toward weapons-grade material if it chose.

Red lines and room for maneuver

Publicly, the Trump administration has set a maximalist position. The president has repeatedly said he will not accept any Iranian enrichment on its soil and has warned that the United States is prepared to use force if necessary. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has echoed that language, calling for what he describes as a “much longer and stronger” agreement that addresses not only nuclear activity but also Iran’s missile program and its support for armed groups across the region.

Behind closed doors, however, U.S. negotiators are understood to be testing more flexible formulas, including strict caps on enrichment levels, limits on stockpiles, dismantlement of some advanced centrifuges and expanded inspection rights, in exchange for phased sanctions relief.

Iranian officials have their own constraints. Araghchi and other senior figures have said repeatedly that while Iran is willing to discuss technical limits, its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is “non-negotiable.” Tehran has rejected including its ballistic missile program or regional proxies in the Geneva channel and is pressing for guarantees that any new arrangement cannot be abandoned unilaterally by a future U.S. administration.

“We have come with full seriousness to secure our national interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in Tehran, stressing that talks were focused on nuclear constraints, sanctions relief and recognition of Iran’s nuclear “rights.”

Negotiators on both sides say some of the most sensitive questions now center on what to do with any remaining 60% enriched uranium, how far to wind back Iran’s capacity to enrich to that level and how quickly sanctions relief would arrive if Tehran takes specific steps.

War signals and political calendars

The Geneva talks are taking place under a drumbeat of military and political signaling.

The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to waters near Israel and the Persian Gulf and bolstered air and missile defenses across the region. The State Department has authorized the departure of non-essential U.S. personnel from some posts and urged American citizens to leave Israel, moves officials say are precautionary but that have contributed to perceptions of an imminent crisis.

Speaking in recent weeks, Trump has insisted the window for diplomacy is limited, without setting a formal deadline. In his State of the Union address, he claimed Iran is working on long-range missiles that could soon hit the United States, a statement current and former intelligence officials have privately questioned.

On Capitol Hill, some Republican lawmakers and pro-Israel groups are urging the White House to prepare large-scale strikes aimed at crippling what they call Iran’s remaining nuclear and missile infrastructure. Many Democrats, along with a number of Republicans, warn that a new war could be both costly and open-ended, invoking the experience of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. House Democrats are drafting a war powers resolution that would seek to restrict any unilateral U.S. attack on Iran.

The Pentagon has also acknowledged strains on its stockpiles of key air and missile defense interceptors after last year’s conflict, complicating the military calculus for a prolonged confrontation.

In Tehran, President Masoud Pezeshkian faces a different mix of pressures. Years of sanctions and the damage from the 2025 strikes have deepened economic hardship, making sanctions relief urgent. At the same time, the memory of foreign bombs falling on Iranian nuclear facilities, and on Israeli cities in retaliation, has stiffened nationalist sentiment and support for strategic deterrence.

Any agreement seen as surrendering core nuclear infrastructure or bowing to U.S. coercion could be politically explosive. The ultimate decision will rest with Iran’s Supreme Leader, who has set strict conditions in the past for talks with Washington.

Oman’s narrow corridor

Holding the process together is Oman, a small Gulf monarchy with a long record as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran.

Omani officials hosted some of the secret contacts that paved the way to the JCPOA. Today, they are reprising that role, organizing both the earlier round in Muscat and this week’s session in Geneva, and physically shuttling draft proposals, questions and replies across a hallway between two delegations that have not yet agreed to sit across from each other.

Al-Busaidi has been careful not to oversell what has been achieved. His statement on “significant progress” stopped short of declaring a breakthrough and emphasized the need for further consultations and detailed technical work in Vienna.

For Oman and other Gulf states, the stakes are concrete. A war that threatens shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint for about a fifth of the world’s oil — would hit their economies immediately and could reshape global energy markets. Oil prices have already risen in recent weeks, with analysts estimating an $8 to $10 per barrel risk premium tied largely to fears of a U.S.–Iran clash.

Saudi Arabia has quietly signaled willingness to increase production to cushion any supply shock, while Israel has warned against any agreement that leaves Iran with what it sees as a latent weapons capability.

A fragile opening

For now, diplomats say, the Geneva channel remains open. Technical teams are preparing for meetings in Vienna that will focus on monitoring, verification and the precise parameters of any new limits on Iran’s nuclear work. Political envoys could return to Europe within days if leaders in Washington and Tehran judge the next steps worth taking.

There is no written framework, no cease-fire-type package and no public sign that the hardest issues — the depth of Iran’s nuclear rollback and the scope and durability of sanctions relief — are close to resolution. But against a backdrop of carriers at sea, evacuation flights and jittery markets, the fact that the two sides are still trading paper rather than missiles is, for now, the only brake on a confrontation both insist they still hope to avoid.