Name: US and Iran to hold second round of talks over nuclear deal | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-02-16T17:15:24.000Z
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Iran and the United States are once again trying to thrash out a deal that could limit Iran's nuclear program and de, escalate tensions.

Delegations from both countries are heading to Geneva for the next round of indirect talks scheduled for Tuesday.

But America's top diplomat, Marco Rubio, has warned that the discussions are likely to be complicated.

Israel's prime minister has demanded the removal of all enriched uranium from Iran as part of any deal on Tehran's nuclear program.

He also wants to curb Iran's development of ballistic missiles which have been used to strike Israel.

Rob McCair was the UK's ambassador to Iran from 2018 to 2021, and he joins us now.

Ambassador, thank you very much for joining us here on BBC News.

Now, how strong are the incentives for the US and Iran this time around?

Well, there's clearly very strong incentives in principle for both sides to do a deal.

After all, you know, the underlying principle of putting Iran's nuclear program under serious constraints and removing it as a threat is, is a, is a, is a real attraction for the US and important for the, for the world.

And for Iran, getting some sanctions relief to, to support their, their really failing economy is also a strong incentive.

But I think you have to look at the fact that against that there's some really huge obstacles to reaching agreement.

I mean, Iran has, after all, just killed many thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of its own people.

That makes it very hard and controversial to reach an agreement that lifts sanctions on them.

And that together with pressure from Israel and pressure from regime change hawks inside his own administration will put incentives on President Trump to make maximalist demands.

And then from Iran's side, it's, it's extremely unlikely that they would be able to make that sort of little compromises that that would demand.

And as you said just now, both sides of this, actually

the technicalities of the nuclear side and the technicalities of the sanctions lift side are really, really complex.

So it's really difficult to see how they get there.

And in terms of optics which we know matter internationally, particularly, how difficult is it for the United States to be offering a deal with a country where we've seen thousands of protesters killed in recent weeks.

But I think it's clear that President Trump himself does want to reach a deal.

And I think that the way he's described the military buildup in the region shows very clearly that he wants to be able to say, I have achieved this deal with Iran and we have gone further than anyone else has done before.

obviously the way that President Trump sees it, flexibility, optionality, unpredictability, they're all things that he sees as really important skills that he has in negotiating.

But it means the result is that one day he's calling for the regime to be overthrown and the next for.

For an agreement with that regime which will give it sanctions relief.

Although that optionality might keep the other side off balance, it also risks just falling between those two stools and getting neither of them.

How divided is public opinion in Iran about what should happen in terms of the kind of regime that should be in charge, or whether they're better off with what they already know?

It's incredibly hard to generalise about what the population of Iran, country of 90 million people, plus what they actually think.

I think there's obviously huge amounts of anger amongst the vast majority of the population, a complete disdain for the regime that has governed them for the last four decades, and

they would dearly love to see the back of it.

But that doesn't mean to say they want to see it replaced with chaos.

I think people are probably very conflicted.

I think people are also conflicted about the role that Reza Pahlavi might play, who's obviously become a big voice, big figure in calling for regime change from outside.

And so I think that there were a lot of very, very different currents of opinion inside the country.

I also think the one thing you have to remember is that even though the regime is very unpopular and has really lost all legitimacy with most Iranian citizens, there's still a core of support for it.

And even if that support is, say, around 10%, which is what some people reckon, that's still around 9 million people.

There's not a consensus of view in Iran about where it wants to go next.

Rob McCair, former UK ambassador to Iran thank you very much for talking to us.