Iran-US nuclear talks: Is a new deal imminent?

DW- May27th2025

Shabnam Von Hein

According to US President Donald Trump, nuclear talks with Iran last Friday showed “some real progress, serious progress.”

“We’ve had some very, very good talks with Iran,” Trump told reporters in northern New Jersey before returning to Washington on Sunday.

“And I don’t know if I’ll be telling you anything good or bad over the next two days, but I have a feeling I might be telling you something good,” Trump said.

“Both the US and Iran are taking the current negotiations very seriously,” Sina Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and an expert on international relations with a focus on Iran’s foreign policy and nuclear non-proliferation, told DW. “They want to reach an agreement,” she said.

According to Azodi, a deal with Iran is of great importance to the US government. “There are three central foreign policy issues for the White House: the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza and Iran’s nuclear program. An agreement with Iran would be considered a major foreign policy success,” she said.

Meanwhile, the government in Iran is keen on a possible deal, Azodi adds. Iran is running out of time for the negotiations as the so-called snapback mechanism, a clause in the current agreement, is coming closer by the hour, she added.

In this case, all UN sanctions against Iran could come back in full force if no agreement is reached.

Secondly, Israel would not attack Iran without the consent of the US. As long as negotiations between the US and Iran continue, such an attack is unlikely, politicians in Tehran believe.

“Thirdly, the economic crisis in Iran continues to worsen,” Azodi told DW. Sanctions are having a massive impact and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has promised to work towards lifting them. However, so far, nothing has been achieved.

New interim agreement?

Under the mediation of Oman, the US and Iran began talks on a possible new nuclear agreement in mid-April. As the United States and Iran have not maintained diplomatic relations since 1979, they have only held talks via third countries.

The first four rounds of talks were unsuccessful as Washington and Tehran were unable to reach an agreement on uranium enrichment. Tehran insists on being allowed to continue enriching uranium for civilian purposes, while the US insists on a complete halt to enrichment.

According to reports in the Italian daily newspaper La Republica, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi proposed an interim agreement, which is now being drafted.

Also, a high-ranking US official told the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom that the possibility of a provisional agreement had been discussed. This would involve freezing uranium enrichment for an initial period of three years in return for the sanctions being partially lifted.

It would not be the first provisional agreement between the US and Iran. Both sides had already signed an interim agreement in Geneva in November 2013. The negotiations subsequently led to Iran’s nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in 2015.

However, that JCPOA agreement was terminated by US President Trump in 2018 during his first term in office. Back then, Trump said that he wanted to “get a better deal” with Iran than his predecessor Barack Obama. The Iranian response was to gradually distance itself from the agreement.

Today, the country is closer to building a nuclear bomb than ever before, experts claim.

Israel views the Iranian nuclear program as a threat to its existence. The Iranian leadership does not recognize Israel and regularly threatens to eliminate it.

Officially, however, Tehran emphasizes that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has expressed concerns. According to IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state enriching to this level.