Oman said that the fifth round of nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran will be held in Rome.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Iranian and US officials are scheduled to hold another round in Rome on Friday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusady said despite growing gaps between the two countries over uranium enrichment.
Confirmation that Wednesday’s nuclear negotiations will continue comes after days when Washington and Tehran expressed their inconsolable position in Iran’s uranium enrichment.
US officials say they hope that Iran will not only reduce its nuclear program, but also stop the abundance of uranium altogether.
Enrichment is the process of changing uranium atoms to create nuclear fuel.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said on Tuesday that his country does not require permission to enrich uranium.
“It says things like “Iran will not allow uranium to enrich,” and others are nonsense,” he was quoted as saying by Mehr’s news agency.
The fifth round of Iranian US lectures will be held in Rome on Friday, May 23rd.
– Badr albusaidi – بدرالبوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) May 21, 2025
His statement responded to Steve Witkoff, a leading US negotiator, dubbed the uranium enrichment as a “red line,” saying Washington “can’t even allow 1% of its enrichment capacity.”
Several Iranian and US officials repeated their respective states.
Washington said Iran could operate nuclear reactors for energy production by importing already enriched uranium, and argues that Tehran’s domestic uranium production would endanger potential weaponization.
Iran, who denies seeking nuclear weapons, says enriching uranium for civilian purposes is the right thing to do as a sovereign state.
Israel, the US’s top ally in the Middle East, is widely believed to have undeclared nuclear weapons.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with military operations if the two countries do not reach a deal, emphasizing that they will not allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.
During his first term in 2018, Trump resolved the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA). This has reduced its nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions on its economy.
Since then, the US has built sanctions on the Iranian economy.
After returning to the White House for the second term in January, Trump updated his “maximum pressure” program on Iran, mainly through economic penalties. For example, he has promised to suffocate the country’s oil exports, particularly to China.
Iran is rebellious in the face of Trump’s threat and is committed to protecting itself from any attack.
Tensions began to ease in April as the US and Iran began holding Oman-mediated consultations, but it is not clear how the two sides will fill in disagreements over Tehran’s enrichment programme.
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araguchi suggested that the US position is changing, stressing that there is “no scenario” for Iran to abandon enrichment.
“Iran can only control what our Iranians are doing, in order to avoid negotiations in public places, especially given the current dissonance that US interlocutors are seeing in public and between what they are saying in one week or another.”