NEED TO KNOW

  • Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi told CBS News Friday that “substantial progress” had been made and a “peace deal is within our reach” — hours before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran
  • Iran had agreed to “never, ever” possess nuclear material capable of creating a bomb, with zero stockpiling and full IAEA verification — concessions Albusaidi called “something completely new” that surpassed the 2015 Obama-era deal
  • Technical talks were scheduled for Monday in Vienna and Albusaidi planned to meet with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner days later — those meetings will not happen

WASHINGTON, DC (TDR) — Hours before the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes across Iran on Saturday, the diplomat who brokered three rounds of nuclear talks over the past month was on American television describing the closest the two countries had come to a deal — and pleading for more time.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Friday that negotiators had made “substantial progress” that was “far, far more than any time before” and that “a peace deal is within our reach.”

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Within 24 hours, that deal was buried under cruise missiles.

What Iran Had Agreed To

The specifics Albusaidi outlined on camera were significant — and directly contradicted the justification President Donald Trump offered hours later for launching strikes.

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According to the Omani foreign minister, Iran had agreed to three conditions during the Geneva negotiations:

Zero nuclear stockpiling. Iran committed to “never, ever have nuclear material that will create a bomb.” Existing enriched uranium would be “blended to the lowest level possible” and converted into fuel that would be “irreversible.”

Full IAEA verification. Iran agreed to grant International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors “full access” to its nuclear sites. Albusaidi said he was “quite confident” American inspectors would also have access.

No bomb-capable material on Iranian soil. Albusaidi called this “something that is not in the old deal” negotiated under President Barack Obama. “This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling.”

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The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — which Trump called “horrible” and withdrew from during his first term — allowed Iran to enrich uranium to 3.67% and maintain limited stockpiles under IAEA monitoring. What Albusaidi described went substantially further.

“I’m asking to continue this process because we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal. And the heart of this deal is very important, and I think we have captured that heart.” — Badr Albusaidi, Omani Foreign Minister

What Trump Said — On The Same Day

Earlier Friday, Trump told reporters he was “not happy” with the pace of negotiations and had not decided whether to authorize strikes. “I’m not happy with the fact that they’re not willing to give us what we have to have,” he said.

During an event in Texas that afternoon, Trump demanded Iran stop enrichment entirely. “Not 20%, 30%, they always want 20%, 30%, they want it for civilian, you know, for civil,” he said. “I think it’s uncivil.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had acknowledged earlier in the week that Iran is not currently enriching uranium — its facilities were destroyed by the U.S. in last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer. But Rubio added, “they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.” An IAEA confidential report issued that week assessed that Iran was conducting “unexplained activity” at nuclear sites bombed last summer — though it did not confirm enrichment had resumed.

In his overnight video statement announcing strikes, Trump said Iran “rejected every opportunity” to make a deal and “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program.” He did not mention Albusaidi’s interview, the concessions described, or the technical talks scheduled for Monday in Vienna.

The Sticking Points That Remained

Albusaidi was candid that gaps remained. The talks centered solely on Iran’s nuclear program — not its ballistic missiles or its funding of regional proxy groups. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had argued both should be part of any deal. Rubio called Iran’s unwillingness to discuss ballistic missiles a “big, big problem” earlier in the week.

Trump’s demand for zero enrichment — not just zero stockpiling — represented a further escalation beyond what negotiators had been working toward. Iran has consistently maintained its right to peaceful enrichment as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, noted that Iran was already not enriching uranium since last June’s strikes — “so that is already de facto happening, and Iran can give that concession.”

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Albusaidi had asked for “a little bit more time” — specifically until after Monday’s planned technical talks in Vienna and a subsequent meeting with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

“If I was President Trump, my only advice is just to give those negotiators enough room and enough space to really close these remaining areas that we need to discuss and agree upon.” — Badr Albusaidi

When CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked whether he believed enough progress had been made to avert strikes, Albusaidi responded: “I hope so.”

Asked whether diplomacy could survive a strike, the foreign minister offered what now reads as a warning: “I don’t think any alternative to diplomacy is going to solve this problem.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry made the timeline explicit in its Saturday condemnation: “The renewed military aggression of the United States and the Zionist regime against Iran is being committed while Iran and the United States were in the midst of a diplomatic process.”

Georgetown professor Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, told Al Jazeera that Israel “appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations.”

When a mediator describes the closest the U.S. and Iran have ever been to a nuclear deal — with concessions that surpassed the Obama-era agreement Trump pulled out of — and bombs fall less than 24 hours later, the question isn’t whether diplomacy failed. It’s whether diplomacy was ever given a chance to succeed.

Sources

This report was compiled using information from CBS News, the full transcript of the Albusaidi interview, CBS News’ analysis of the nuclear talks, CNN, Al Jazeera, i24NEWS, Common Dreams, Mediaite, and NPR.

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