Will Friday Diplomacy With the Islamic Republic Lead to a Military Strike?

The gaps between Washington and Tehran are so wide that diplomatic talks scheduled for Friday are reminiscent of a line from “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which Tevye informs his love-struck daughter that “a bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?” In a first since the 12-day war, President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are due to negotiate with an Iranian team headed by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at Muscat, Oman on Friday. A similar meeting was aborted last June after Israel struck Iranian targets.“This weekend can be dramatic,” an unidentified senior security official in Israel tells reporters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday for a previously-unscheduled meeting after he reportedly said that a “critical mass” could collapse the regime. “They’re negotiating with us, they don’t want us to hit them, you know, we have a big fleet going over there,” Mr. Trump said Thursday morning at a Washington prayer breakfast. A strike group is in position near Iranian shores. An Iranian drone was downed Tuesday as it approached the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. The venue for the Friday talks, list of participants, and other details seem settled now. The topics, though, remain in dispute. “Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10 am Friday,” Mr. Araghchi wrote on X. He thanked “our Omani brothers” for hosting. Will he negotiate anything other than the nuclear file, though?To “actually lead to something meaningful,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio says, talks with the Iranians must include “the range of their ballistic missiles, that includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region, that includes a nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people.” This is the first time “a senior American official actually links human rights or a transition to democracy, however you want to interpret Secretary Rubio’s comments, treatment of the people, into a negotiation with the regime, into a demand,” a former White House adviser on Iran, Richard Goldberg, said during a Wednesday briefing of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on the Oman talks. Earlier in the week Mr. Witkoff traveled to Israel, where he met with Mr. Netanyahu and the top security establishment. Israel’s top concern, he was told, is Iran’s growing missile arsenal, which for now Tehran refuses to negotiate over.Following the diminishing of Iran’s nuclear arsenal, Tehran’s remaining “extortion threat” is its missiles, Mr. Goldberg says. “The Iranians are continuing to build an ICBM program to hit the continental United States one day,” so it’s “one of our top national security interests to degrade or destroy” the missile program. On Thursday Fars News reported that Khorramshahr 4 ballistic missiles are now deployed in underground bases nationwide. The outlet claims the missile can reach Israel in 10 to 12 minutes, with speeds of about 16 Mach outside the atmosphere and 8 Mach inside. Israeli sources say they would strike Iran’s missiles even if America declines to do so. In contrast, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are lobbying Mr. Trump to avoid any military confrontation. Gulf countries fear that “maybe a resurgent Persia is actually more worrying than a weakened and chastened Islamic Republic,” a former British ambassador to several Arab capitals, Edmund Fitton Brown, said in the FDD’s briefing. Arabs also fear a strike could lead to a region-wide war. Yet “there has been conflict in the region,” the FDD’s top Iran analyst, Behnam Ben Taleblu, counters. “We have been going through a multifront, multicycle round of regional wars since the Iran-backed terrorist attack of Hamas on October 7 against Israelis.”Since then the proxy armies the Islamic Republic built in Lebanon and Gaza have been bludgeoned, and Iraqi and Yemeni militias are restrained. Inside Iran, protest has ebbed following a brutal killing spree that exacted tens of thousands fatalities. The underlined problems that led Iranians to the streets, though, remain unresolved. By talking to America, the regime is hoping to deter “an increasingly dissatisfied and increasingly brutalized Iranian population that is looking to the west, and in particular America, and especially to Donald Trump, for support,” Mr. Ben Taleblu says. Will Mr. Trump renege on a promise of “help” to the protesters? “He’s going to try to accomplish what he can through non military needs, and if he feels like the military is the only option, then he’s ultimately going to choose that option,” Vice President Vance says, indicating even he is in the dark on the president’s decision.

Will Friday Diplomacy With the Islamic Republic Lead to a Military Strike?

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