Europeans Press Iran on Nuclear Curbs, but Geneva Talks Yield No Breakthrough

Yomiuri Shimbun

3 hours ago

GENEVA – European foreign ministers pressed their Iranian counterpart on Friday for curbs to Tehran's nuclear program, but the high-stakes meeting in Geneva yielded no quick off-ramp from the conflict in which President Donald Trump is threatening to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
Hours of talks at a luxury hotel ended without a breakthrough, officials said, even as all the ministers came out declaring their readiness to keep talking. The clock is ticking, though: Trump has set a two-week deadline to decide whether the United States will join Israel in the military campaign it launched last week vowing to cripple Iran's nuclear sites. Trump on Friday said that 'two weeks would be the maximum.'
Washington is now in a standoff with Tehran over whether Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium at all, even for civilian purposes. After Friday's meeting, European ministers said they had pushed Tehran to restrict nuclear activities and negotiate with Washington, while Iran's foreign minister countered that Israeli strikes must stop before Tehran resumes any bargaining with the White House.
A European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that there was no date set for a future meeting but that officials intend to reconvene within two weeks – before Trump's self-imposed deadline.
Trump, however, characterized the European intervention as unhelpful and unlikely to achieve results.
'Nah, they didn't help,' he said Friday afternoon. 'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.'
European leaders have been thrown off balance by Trump, who denied U.S. involvement in Israel's attack only to warn days later that he may join the Israeli campaign, which has spiraled into a deadly tit-for-tat with mounting civilian casualties and risks inflaming the region.
The attacks continued Friday as the officials sat down for talks in Geneva.
America's traditional European partners are deeply wary that U.S. involvement would lead to a wider, unpredictable war and that their nations could be drawn in. They have been working the phones hoping to carve out a diplomatic path before any U.S. strikes.
Trump, who had promised to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program and lambasted the era of U.S. interventions in the Middle East, has since demanded Iran's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.'
Despite the absence of a swift agreement, European officials hope Friday's meeting in Geneva – involving France, Britain, Germany and the European Union, which all had a central role in negotiating the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement along with Russia, China and the United States – leads to a more prominent mediation role for American allies that have been sidelined under Trump.
European officials cast the latest diplomacy as an 11th-hour scramble to influence the crisis: to extract greater concessions from Iran, whose position they believe has now been weakened, and to get Trump to back away from his threats of a bombing campaign and suggestions of regime change.
The Europeans acknowledged that it was a tall order on both fronts. It is far from clear that Trump will heed – or is even listening to – their calls for restraint. And Iran may not be willing to accept any ultimatum, officials concede.
On Friday, the Europeans – French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and the European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas – gathered at the German Consulate in Geneva, where they conferred around a table on an outdoor terrace. They met with Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, later Friday afternoon.
'Regional escalation benefits no one, and that's why we need to keep the discussions with Tehran open,' Kallas told reporters after the meeting.
Trump's wavering and his two-week deadline opened a small window for the diplomatic bid by the Europeans – who share Washington's insistence that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon. The meeting was coordinated with Washington, four officials familiar with the planning said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Still, Araghchi told reporters that Iran was 'ready to consider diplomacy once again, once the aggression is stopped and the aggressor is held accountable.'
The European diplomat said Friday's talks broached the U.S. demand of zero enrichment of uranium by Iran, though there was little movement on this and other issues. While Tehran has said it is open to negotiating over its nuclear activities, it has rejected giving up all uranium enrichment, maintaining that it has the right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian use.
Previous talks contemplated allowing Iran to continue a limited amount of uranium enrichment for civilian energy purposes. Iran in the past pledged never to acquire nuclear weapons under the 2015 deal that Trump abandoned in 2018.
Barrot, France's foreign minister, has said European conditions include a path to 'a substantial and durable rollback of Iran's nuclear program, of its ballistic missile program and its regional destabilization activities.' He suggested Friday without elaborating that the Iranians appeared ready to make concessions that previously were not on the table. But Araghchi said Iran's defense capabilities, an apparent reference to ballistic missiles, were 'nonnegotiable.'
France, Germany, Britain and the E.U. were central to negotiations that resulted in the landmark 2015 deal to contain Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief under the Obama administration. After Trump abandoned the deal and reimposed U.S. sanctions, Iran gradually increased the quality and quantity of its enriched-uranium production.
The Europeans would be instrumental in enforcing a new deal, including at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog.
Trump mostly shut out the Europeans when he came into office again this year and instead kick-started negotiations with Iran, which included promises of peace until the Israeli strikes began last week.
French President Emmanuel Macron said at a Group of Seven meeting this week that Trump had indicated he would seek discussions to stop the hostilities. Soon after leaving the G-7, Trump denied that he was working on a 'ceasefire' and warned Iranians to 'immediately evacuate Tehran' – the nation's capital with around 10 million residents – putting the world on edge.
Tehran has warned it would retaliate against a U.S. attack by hitting American bases in the region.
European calls for de-escalation have done little to move Israeli officials, who have also framed the conflict as a chance to topple Iran's leadership. Israel launched its strikes last week despite Trump's stated ambitions for diplomacy, derailing U.S. negotiations and vowing to end Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is widely known to possess nuclear weapons but has never publicly acknowledged such an arsenal.
Though the Europeans all urge de-escalation and agree on restricting Iran's nuclear program, they are not speaking with a single voice. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this week praised the Israeli attacks and described them as 'the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.' Macron, meanwhile, warned against 'regime change because nobody can say what would come after that' and asked whether anyone had learned from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The conflict has also raised questions about an E.U. review of trade ties with Israel over its devastating war in Gaza. European officials had recently toughened their criticism of Israel. But some E.U. countries, now keen to see Iran's capabilities targeted, appear less inclined to consider punitive action against Israel, which had been expected to be debated by the 27-nation bloc in the next few weeks.
Israeli fighter jets continued the blitz on Iran overnight Thursday and throughout Friday, attacking sites linked to Iran's missile systems and dozens of targets in Tehran, including a weapons research center, the Israeli military said Friday. Israel's Army Radio reported that Israel assassinated an Iranian nuclear scientist, bringing the number of Iranian scientists Israel claims to have killed since it launched the conflict last week to at least 11.
During an Iranian barrage Friday, some missiles broke through Israel's vaunted air defenses and hit near government buildings by Haifa's port, injuring about 31 people, a hospital said.
Iranian strikes hit sites in central and southern Israel, including a building bearing the logo of a military cyberdefense training center in Beersheba.
The intensifying strikes and threats have also triggered a diplomatic scramble in the Middle East, where Iran and Israel's neighbors are rattled by the prospect of an widening war.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi visited Paris on Thursday and described European talks with Iran as important for 'protecting the region.' Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty spoke with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff for the second time in a week and separately with Araghchi, urging them to 'utilize the available diplomatic channels' to halt the hostilities, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
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Parker reported from Cairo. Natalie Allison and Nilo Tabrizy in Washington, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Victoria Bisset in London and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.