US and Iran conclude high-stakes talks in Oman. Here’s what to know

By Nadeen Ebrahim, Mostafa Salem, CNN

(CNN) — Delegations from the United States and Iran concluded indirect talks in the Gulf Arab state of Oman Friday. It was the first round of negotiations between the two sides since the US and Israel struck the Islamic Republic last summer.

Iranian media said the summit ended with a “willingness to continue,” without specifying a date.

The negotiations took place amid an American military buildup in the Middle East, and after US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran if it used lethal force against protesters or refuses to sign a nuclear deal.

Ahead of the talks, Iran’s foreign minister said his country “enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year.”

“We engage in good faith and stand firm on our rights,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.

Still, sharp language has persisted on both sides, with Trump saying on Thursday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “should be very worried” as both sides prepared for negotiations.

Here’s what we know about the talks.

Who is involved?

Araghchi and US envoy Steve Witkoff took part in the talks, along with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The talks were indirect – mediated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who earlier on Friday met with each of the parties separately.

In photos released by the state-run Oman News Agency, the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, was also seen attending the meetings.

Negotiations are meant to ⁠adopt a format similar to previous rounds, Iranian media said. Before the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June, Tehran and Washington had gone through five rounds of negotiations, where Omani mediators shuttled between US and Iranian delegations.

Those talks effectively came to an end after Israel struck Iranian nuclear and military sites in mid-June, after which the US struck three Iranian nuclear facilities.

What was discussed?

Araghchi presented to his Omani counterpart a “preliminary plan” to “manage the current situation” between Iran and the US, Iranian media reported, in a bid to advance negotiations.

Albusaidi then conveyed the plan to the US delegation led by Witkoff, and the American response will be delivered to the Iranian side during the talks, Iranian media added.

The scope of the talks was unclear. Before the talks, Iranian officials insisted they only wanted to discuss issues related to the nuclear program, and that other matters such as Iran’s ballistic missile program, proxies across the region and domestic unrest were off-limits.

The US had demanded a broader set of discussions that includes ballistic missiles, Tehran’s armed proxies that remain a danger to US and Israeli interests in the region, and Iran’s recent brutal crackdown on protests.

On the nuclear issue, a key point of contention remains Iran’s demand to enrich uranium – a nuclear fuel that can be used to make a bomb if purified to high levels – which the US and its allies reject. Iran has offered to place checks on its nuclear program to ensure that it isn’t weaponized, demanding the lifting of sanctions in return.

What’s at stake?

The US moved military assets, including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, closer to the Middle East, raising concerns that prospects of war were growing.

Trump said last month that the US had “an armada” moving toward Iran “just in case,” adding that while he would rather not “see anything happen,” his administration is watching Iran “very closely.”

The talks gave rise to hopes that a full-blown war may be averted.

Wary of a conflict that may spill into the rest of the Middle East, regional countries have been attempting to de-escalate and deter Trump from launching an attack on Iran, knowing that a new war will only plunge the region into crisis.

“Overshadowing this is a very serious threat of military attack (on Iran) and war,” Negar Mortazavi,” an Iranian-American journalist and political analyst, told CNN’s Eleni Giokos

.Iran has made it clear that any US attack will not be met with the same “restraint” it showed last summer, after Israel and the US struck the country.

Iran has a number of tools at its disposal should war break out with the US or Israel. It is believed to have thousands of missiles and drones that could target US troops and assets in the Middle East.

Tehran has repeatedly warned that it would retaliate against US allies in the region if attacked. When US bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities in the summer, Iran launched an unprecedented missile strike in Qatar, targeting al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East.

Iran could also mobilize a vast network of proxies across the region, potentially hitting Israel and US bases, and disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which more than a fifth of the world’s oil and a large share of liquefied natural gas flow. This could send shockwaves through the world.

Despite the talks, “the threat of war is very serious,” Mortazavi said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Fred Pleitgen, Jessie Yeung, Jennifer Hansler, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Todd Symons contributed to this report.