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"We're going to war" (Vance)
| queensbridge benzo | 02/17/26 |
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Date: February 17th, 2026 6:36 PM Author: queensbridge benzo Vance Says Iran Is Ignoring Core U.S. Demands in Talks Summarize Iran says nuclear talks made progress, while Washington warned all options remain on the table
Feb. 17, 2026 at 4:59 pm Police officers stand guard outside the Oman ambassador's residency in Geneva, Switzerland, where US-Iran nuclear talks are taking place. Ahead of the negotiations, Tehran had indicated it was willing to compromise around the edges of its nuclear program, including moving its near weapons-grade uranium offshore, people familiar with the matter said.
But speaking Tuesday evening, Vance said it was clear from his briefing from the talks that they hadn’t yielded any breakthrough, adding that military action remained an option. The U.S. has demanded Iran end its enrichment of uranium, a central aspect of its nuclear work, which the White House fears gives Iran the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
“One thing I will say about the negotiation this morning: In some ways, it went well—they agreed to meet afterwards. But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through,” Vance told Fox News, without providing further detail.
As negotiations resumed, Iran sent a veiled threat, carrying out military exercises in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. News agencies affiliated with the country’s security agencies showed footage of cruise missiles being launched from trucks and boats Monday, as a tanker could be seen sailing in the background.
President Trump has assembled a massive force just off Iran’s coast.
“I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” Trump told reporters late Monday, saying he would remain indirectly involved in Tuesday’s talks, which ended after 3½ hours of discussion. “They want to make a deal.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned in a speech Tuesday ahead of the talks that Iran was prepared to retaliate against an American strike. “More dangerous than the American warship is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea,” he said. The U.S. “may be struck so hard that it cannot get back up.”
Until Tuesday, much of the diplomacy had focused on talking about the scope of negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Tuesday’s talks were more substantive and that both sides in Geneva presented ideas aimed at crafting an agreement. He said Iran and the U.S. agreed to exchange texts to create the framework for a deal before a date for new negotiations is decided.
“This does not mean that we can quickly reach an agreement, but at least the path has started,” Araghchi said after the talks with U.S. chief negotiator Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
However a U.S. official gave a more circumspect readout from the negotiations, which took place at the Omani ambassador’s residence on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The official said Iran had agreed to present a text within two weeks “to address some of the open gaps in our position.”
Military boat firing a missile into the air during a drill in the Gulf. A boat fires a missile during military exercises by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Strait of Hormuz. SEPAH NEWS/AFP/Getty Images Iran has always said it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, though it is the only country without nuclear weapons to have produced 60% enriched uranium, a purity close to the 90% needed to build a weapon.
The bulk of its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium is thought to be buried under the rubble of nuclear sites pounded by the U.S. and Israel in June.
At the previous meeting in Oman, Iran told the U.S. it was open to sending that highly enriched material, which would be enough to fuel 12 nuclear bombs, abroad, possibly to Russia, according to Iranian, Arab and U.S. officials.
Iranian officials have signaled in conversations with regional diplomats that they might offer to pause uranium enrichment for up to three years, diplomats said. That promise wouldn’t change much—Iran is believed to have stopped enriching uranium after U.S. strikes crippled its main nuclear facilities in June.
Some regional diplomats are thinking bigger and pushing a multipoint plan that includes everything from nonaggression commitments to business deals. The scale is aimed at grabbing the president’s attention with a splashy plan like the one his envoys crafted to end the war in Gaza.
An Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hamid Ghanbari, reflected some of that thinking, saying he wants to discuss doing business with the U.S. if sanctions are lifted.
“Common interests in the fields of oil and gas, mining investments, and even airplane purchases, are included in the negotiation framework,” Ghanbari told the semiofficial Fars news agency Sunday. “For the sustainability of the agreement, it is essential that the U.S. also benefits in areas with high and rapid economic returns.”
It is unclear how much of that could be up for serious discussion, even by Iran, or whether any of the ideas will be enough to persuade the U.S. that the talks could meet its goal of stripping Iran of the capacity to make a nuclear bomb.
Trump said last week he thought talks on a deal should wrap up within a month.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meets the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva Iranian Foreign Ministry Handout/EPA/Shutterstock The White House is also under pressure from Israel to constrain Iran’s ballistic missile program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Trump last week, said Sunday a good deal would require the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and limiting the range of its ballistic missiles.
Iran has said it would only discuss missiles with its regional counterparts.
With Iran’s enrichment capabilities severely damaged last June, Washington has little incentive to compromise by offering broad-based sanctions relief, said Richard Nephew, who negotiated with Iran under the Biden and Obama administrations.
“It appears that what’s on offer to Iran is similar as with Venezuela,” he said. “Surrender and we won’t attack you.”
The Geneva talks are the second such meeting in two weeks. They follow an initial round in Oman that both sides called a good start. Five rounds of nuclear talks last spring stalled and ended with powerful Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran, which badly crippled its nuclear program.
Some past U.S. negotiators have said Trump has given himself leverage to force a deal by ramping up forces in the Middle East. The Pentagon last week redeployed the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, from the Caribbean and sent it toward the Middle East. It will join another aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and a host of other U.S. warships, warplanes and air-defense systems across the region.
Iranian officials have repeatedly complained that the U.S. hasn’t set out what Tehran would get in terms of sanctions relief if it makes concessions on the nuclear side. At a minimum, Iranian officials said, Tehran wants swift access to the roughly $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues parked in Qatar under U.S. restrictions.
People involved in last spring’s nuclear talks say the U.S. never articulated any detailed sanctions relief and that Washington had decided even the Qatar funds were out of bounds.
One Iranian official briefed on Tuesday’s talks said the U.S. continued to argue that Tehran would receive no immediate sanctions relief under a deal. The official said Washington wants to see Iran’s main nuclear sites decommissioned as part of any deal.
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said expectations for a deal weren’t high in Washington. “No one has ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran,” he said. “But we’re going to try.”
Watch: The U.S. Crackdown Strangling the Illicit Network of Dark Fleet Tankers
Over 1,400 so-called dark fleet ships have moved sanctioned oil for years. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday breaks down how these tankers evade scrutiny and how the Trump administration has created a playbook for a global crackdown on shadow fleet vessels. Illustration: WSJ/Ryan Trefes |