Iran and the United States on Friday held talks in Oman focused on Tehran's nuclear program, their first since June. However, a dispute over the agenda has signaled that progress will be hard to achieve, with fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

The talks, originally scheduled for Friday in Istanbul with several regional countries expected to participate, were relocated to Oman — a Gulf sultanate on the Arabian Peninsula — at Iran's request, and scaled back to bilateral discussions between Washington and Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on X on Friday ahead of the talks: "Equal standing, mutual respect and mutual interest are not rhetoric — they are a must and the pillars of a durable agreement."

US President Donald Trump has warned that "bad things" would probably happen if a deal could not be reached and the US State Department on Friday once again urged its nationals to immediately leave Iran.

The US has positioned a naval group led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the region. Iran, for its part, has repeatedly vowed to strike back at US bases if attacked.

Gulf Arab nations fear an attack could spark a regional conflict, dragging them in as well. That threat is real — already, US forces have shot down an Iranian drone near the Lincoln and Iran has attempted to intercept a US-flagged vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by Turkish newspapers as saying, "so far, I see that the parties want to make room for diplomacy", adding that conflict was "not the solution".

Tehran has maintained that the discussions will cover only its nuclear program, insisting its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes. The US and Israel have accused it of pursuing nuclear weapons in the past.

Proposal to halt uranium

Al Jazeera reported that diplomats from Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar had offered Iran a proposal in which Tehran would halt enrichment for three years, send its highly enriched uranium out of the country and pledge "not initiate the use of ballistic missiles". The New York Times reported on Thursday that the two sides had agreed that negotiations would also cover missiles.

Political analyst Hossein Qatib warned against surrendering Iran's enriched uranium. "Handing them over in one go — under any label — is not goodwill or strategic rationality. It is voluntary disarmament under military threat," he said.

Given the two sides' track record in past negotiations, few analysts are expressing optimism.

Former Iranian diplomat Nosratollah Tajik was blunt. "It is unlikely this round of mediation will go anywhere due to structural issues, the gap between goals and expectations, and the unfinished business of the previous two stages of Iran-US conflict," he said.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank FDD, said: "It's very difficult to see them conceding enough in the talks for the US credibly to claim a breakthrough. And this is where I think military conflict is more likely than not."

cuihaipei@chinadaily.com.cn