Turkey: US and Iran near compromise on nuclear deal, warns against expanding talks

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, says the United States and Iran are showing rare signs of flexibility in talks aimed at reviving a nuclear agreement, raising hopes that years of deadlock could give way to a limited but workable deal. 

Yet he cautions that pushing negotiations beyond the nuclear issue could derail progress entirely and risk igniting another regional conflict.

Fidan, who has emerged as a key behind-the-scenes broker between Washington, Tehran and Middle Eastern capitals, told the Financial Times that US officials appear prepared to retreat from their long-standing insistence that Iran eliminate all uranium enrichment. 

That demand has been central to the collapse of previous efforts, as Iran argues enrichment is permitted under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Instead, Fidan says a more realistic framework is coming into view: Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium under tightly defined limits, monitored by an intrusive inspections, a structure broadly resembling the 2015 nuclear accord abandoned by the US in 2018.

From Ankara’s perspective, Tehran is no longer posturing. “Iran genuinely wants an agreement,” Fidan said, adding that Iranian leaders now see a deal with Washington as unavoidable.

At the same time, the US appears to be recalibrating its expectations. “The Americans understand the Iranians have red lines,” Fidan noted, arguing that coercion has reached the end of its usefulness.

But the Turkish minister delivered a stark warning about scope creep. Attempts to bundle Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its backing of regional armed groups into the nuclear talks would almost certainly cause them to collapse, he said.

“If everything is put on the table at once,” Fidan warned, “even the nuclear issue will stall, and the region could slide toward war.”