Iran seeks last-minute changes to US talks, raising doubts over Friday meeting

Dubai:  Iran has requested changes to the venue and format of planned negotiations with the United States just days before a high-stakes meeting scheduled for Friday, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter cited by Axios, raising uncertainty over whether the talks will proceed as planned.

Tehran is seeking to move the discussions from Istanbul to Oman and to shift from a multilateral setting to a strictly bilateral format involving only Iranian and American officials, the sources told Axios. The demands mark a retreat from understandings reached in recent days, after several Arab and Muslim countries had already been invited to attend the talks as observers.

The proposed changes come at a sensitive moment. According to Axios, if the talks collapse, the setback could push President Donald Trump away from diplomacy and toward military options, at a time when the United States has already assembled significant firepower in the Gulf region.

The negotiations were originally designed to take place in Istanbul as part of a wider regional effort to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran. Officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan and Oman had been invited to participate in sessions that were expected to combine bilateral, trilateral and multilateral discussions, according to diplomats familiar with the planning.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the White House’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, are expected to lead the negotiating teams if the talks move forward. Axios reported that Araghchi held phone calls on Tuesday with his counterparts in Oman and Türkiye, as well as with the prime minister of Qatar, underscoring the intense diplomatic maneuvering under way.

At the same time, Witkoff met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli officials said the meeting focused on Iran and included senior security figures, among them the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, the head of Mossad and the country’s military intelligence chief.