“NEITHER WAR NOR PEACE”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday he had a “favourable outlook for the negotiations” that could finally “move beyond this ‘neither war nor peace’ situation”.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation at the talks, has called them “a historic opportunity”, adding that a deal was “within reach”.
The US will be represented by envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The two countries held talks earlier this month in Oman, which is mediating the negotiations, then gathered for a second round in Geneva last week.
A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
In January, fresh tensions between the US and Iran emerged after Tehran engaged in a bloody crackdown on widespread protests that have posed one of the greatest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.
Trump has threatened several times to intervene to “help” the Iranian people.
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that “the region seems to expect a war at this point”.
In January, there was “a big push by a number of Middle Eastern states to convince the US not to” strike Iran.
“But there’s a lot of apprehension at this point, because the expectation is that this time” a war would be “bigger” than the one in June.
Tehran residents who spoke to AFP were divided as to whether there would be renewed conflict.
Homemaker Tayebeh noted that Trump had “said that war would be very bad for Iran”.
“There would be famine and people would suffer a lot. People are suffering now, but at least with war, our fate might be clear,” the 60-year-old said.