GENEVA – Six world powers held talks with Iran on Thursday that U.S. officials said would need to convince them Tehran was prepared to show it was not hiding plans for a nuclear bomb.
Underlining they would not threaten fresh sanctions against Tehran but had prepared them in case the talks made no progress, Washington also said there could be an opportunity for a rare bilateral meeting with the Iranians.
“This can’t be a phony process,” a senior U.S. official said in Washington. “It can’t be a process where they go through the motions.”
U.S. diplomats sat alongside those from Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China for the talks near Geneva on how to end the long-running standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is designed purely for generating electricity.