Iran and the United States held talks in Switzerland on Thursday in a last-ditch bid to avert war under the shadow of the biggest American military buildup in the Middle East in decades.
The Oman-mediated discussions follow repeated threats from Donald Trump to strike Iran, with the US president last Thursday giving Tehran 15 days to reach a deal.
While Iran has insisted the discussions focus solely on its nuclear programme, the US wants Tehran’s missile programme and its support for militant groups in the region curtailed.
The US and Iranian delegations held a morning session at the Omani ambassador’s residence amid tight security and then paused ahead of resuming at around 1630-1700 GMT, according to the foreign ministry in Tehran.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said after discussions began that the two sides expressed “unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solutions”.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi joined the negotiations, a source close to the talks told AFP, with an Iranian state TV journalist also reporting he was attending.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted ahead of the talks that the Islamic Republic was not “at all” seeking a nuclear weapon.
As part of the dramatic US build-up, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, sent to the Mediterranean this week, left a naval base in Crete on Thursday, an AFP photographer said.
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, which carry dozens of warplanes and are crewed by thousands of sailors, in the region.
The developments follow massive protests in Iran that rights groups say saw thousands of demonstrators killed.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump accused Iran of “pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions”, though Tehran has always insisted its programme is for civilian purposes.
Trump also claimed Tehran 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”.
The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims “big lies”.
The maximum range of Iran’s missiles is 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles), according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed.
However, the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000 kilometres — less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.
READ ALSO: Iran Rejects US Claims On Missile Programme As ‘Big Lies’
Trump’s State of the Union accusations in Congress were delivered in the same forum in which then-President George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
