ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The US and Iran are set to hold the third round of indirect talks over Tehran's nuclear program, as Washington continues threatening to strike Iran if a deal is not reached.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Geneva on Wednesday and held a meeting with his Omani counterpart Badr Albusaidi, whose country is mediating the nuclear talks.
"The two ministers discussed the latest developments and reviewed the views and proposals that the Iranian side will present in order to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear dossier, based on the guiding principles agreed upon in the previous round of negotiations," read a statement from the Omani foreign ministry.
The US delegation is led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
US Secretary of State Marc Rubio told reporters on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump prefers diplomacy but "I want you to understand and everyone should know that Iran poses a very great threat to the United States and has for a very long time."
He added that Iran possesses "a very large number of ballistic missiles... that threaten the United States and our bases in the region and our partners in the region and all of our bases in the UAE and Qatar and Bahrain. And they also possess naval assets that threaten shipping and try to threaten the US Navy."
Iran recently conducted a joint naval exercise with Russia in the Strait of Hormuz.
The top American diplomat said Thursday's talks "will be largely focused on the nuclear program," hoping that progress can be made. "But it's also important to remember that Iran refuses, refuses to talk about ballistic missiles to us or to anyone. And that's a big problem. I don't think diplomacy is ever off the table. The president wants diplomatic solutions. He prefers them. He prefers them greatly. He wants that more than anything else."
Iranian officials say their nuclear program is purely peaceful and argue that any deal must acknowledge what they call Iran’s right to enrich uranium under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. They have also rejected US demands to limit their ballistic missile program or reduce support for anti-Israel armed groups.
Amid rising tensions, Washington has assembled its largest naval presence in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has boosted the number of fighter jets deployed both on land and at sea across the region.
In his State of the Union address, Trump accused Iran of "pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions" and said it had "already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas" and was working on missiles that could reach the US.
Iran’s foreign ministry dismissed the claims as "big lies".
Rubio said on Wednesday that Iran does not need nuclear energy.
"They don't need to enrich [uranium] in order to have nuclear energy. They don't need nuclear energy. By the way, they have plenty of natural gas. But if they wanted nuclear energy, they could have it the way other countries have it. The fact that they refuse to get it that way, the fact that they insist not just on enrichment, but on enrichment in locations located inside of mountains... you would have to lack common sense to not know what that means, or what that could mean."