PARIS: A negotiated deal between the US and Iran to avert war “appeared really possible,” Oman’s Foreign Minister, who mediated talks between the two sides, said in an article published on Thursday, while blaming Israel for the ongoing conflict.
Writing in The Economist, Badr Albusaidi abandoned the usual reserve of diplomatic language, calling the war a “catastrophe” and saying US President Donald Trump’s administration had “lost control of its own foreign policy.”
Albusaidi claimed the US and Iran had been “on the verge of a real deal” on Iran’s nuclear program twice over the last nine months, including in June last year when the process ended with Israeli-US attacks on Iran.
He mediated a second round of indirect negotiations that resumed in Oman on Feb. 6, with the final round held in Geneva on Feb. 26.
“It was a shock but not a surprise when on Feb. 28 — just a few hours after the latest and most substantive talks — Israel and America again launched an unlawful military strike against the peace that had briefly appeared really possible,” Albusaidi wrote.
