• Tehran is trying to reduce expectations for fast trades.
• The first round of conversation a week ago described the first round as productive.
• Washington hopes to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment.

Dubai: Iran and the United States will hold new nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long stalemate on Tehran’s atomic energy, if President Donald Trump threatens to violate military operations if diplomacy fails.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will negotiate indirectly through Oman’s mediator, the first week in Muscat, which both sides describe as constructive.

Tehran tried to reduce expectations for a quick deal after some Iranian officials speculated that sanctions could be lifted as soon as possible. Iran’s biggest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week that he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

“I simply stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. They can’t have nuclear weapons. I hope Iran will be great, prosperous and excellent,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six powers in the first semester of 2018 and imposed serious sanctions on Tehran, and his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has recovered since returning to the White House in January.

Washington hopes Iran stops producing highly enriched uranium and believes that this is intended to build an atomic bomb.

Tehran has been saying its nuclear program is peaceful, saying he is willing to negotiate some roadsides in exchange for sanctions, but hopes that Watertight guarantees Washington won’t rebel again like Trump did in 2018.

Since 2019, Iran has violated 2015 restrictions on uranium enrichment, far exceeding stocks far more than what the West calls a necessary for civilian energy plan.

A senior official who described Iran’s negotiating stance under anonymity listed Iran’s red line as a centrifuge that never agreed to remove its uranium enrichment, fully release the enrichment or reduce its abundant uranium stock below the agreed level reached in 2015. Iran also refused to negotiate defense capabilities such as missiles.

Although both Tehran and Washington say they are struggling to pursue diplomacy, there is still a big gap between them in the dispute that has been going on for twenty years.

Witkoff and Araqchi had a brief interaction at the end of the first round last week, but officials from both countries have not negotiated directly since 2015, and Iran said the Roman talks will also be held indirectly through the Amanian mediator.

Russia, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, proposed “assist, mediate and play any role that is beneficial to Iran and the United States.”