Iran urges US to drop ‘excessive demands’ to reach deal

PARIS – Iran said on Feb 27 that in order to reach a deal, the United States will have to drop its “excessive demands”, tempering the optimism expressed after talks seen as a last-ditch bid to avert war.

The Oman-mediated talks followed repeated threats from US President Donald Trump to strike Iran, and with the US conducting its biggest military build-up in the region in decades.

Mr Trump on Feb 19 gave Iran 15 days to reach a deal, and while Iran has insisted that the discussions focus solely on its nuclear programme, the US wants Tehran’s missile programme and its support for militant groups curtailed.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb 26 that Mr Trump’s negotiating team would demand that Iran dismantle its three main nuclear sites and hand over all its remaining enriched uranium to the US.

Without specifying what demands he was referring to, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Feb 27 told his Egyptian counterpart that “success in this path requires seriousness and realism from the other side and avoidance of any miscalculation and excessive demands”.

Following the talks in Geneva on Feb 26, Mr Araghchi told state TV that the negotiations “made very good progress and entered into the elements of an agreement very seriously, both in the nuclear field and in the sanctions field”.

He said the next round would take place in “perhaps less than a week”, with technical talks at the UN’s nuclear agency to begin in Vienna on March 2.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi also announced that technical discussions were to be held next week in Vienna.

“We have finished the day after significant progress in the negotiation between the United States and Iran,” he said in a post on X.

Mr Araghchi, in a post on X, called the latest round of talks “the most intense so far”.

“It concluded with the mutual understanding that we will continue to engage in a more detailed manner on matters that are essential to any deal – including sanctions termination and nuclear-related steps,” he wrote.

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi joined the negotiations, a source close to the talks told AFP.

‘Big lies’

Mr Trump said in his State of the Union address that Iran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America”.

He also accused Iran of “pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions”, though Tehran has always insisted its programme is for civilian purposes.

The accusations were delivered in the same forum in which then President George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Iranian foreign ministry

called these claims “big lies”

.

On Feb 25, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Iran is “not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can”, adding that Tehran “refuses” to discuss its ballistic missile programme and “that’s a big problem”.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted ahead of the talks that the Islamic republic was not “at all” seeking a nuclear weapon.

US Vice-President J.D. Vance told The Washington Post on Feb 26 there was “no chance” that a long-threatened strike on Iran would result “in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight”.

Parallel to the talks is a dramatic US military build-up in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier,

sent to the Mediterranean

this week.

Washington currently has more than a dozen warships in the Middle East: one aircraft carrier – the USS Abraham Lincoln – nine destroyers and three other combat ships.

It is rare for there to be two US aircraft carriers in the region.

The maximum range of Iran’s missiles is 2,000km, according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed.

However, the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000km – less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.

A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched strikes on Iran in June 2025, beginning a 12-day war that the US briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

In January, Tehran launched a mass crackdown on nationwide protests, killing thousands of people according to rights groups.

Protests have since resumed around Iranian universities. AFP