USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier headed from Caribbean to Middle East: Officials

(LONDON) — Negotiating teams from the United States and Iran are expected to meet on Friday in Oman, marking a reopening of nuclear talks following weeks of tensions and threats, as leaders in Tehran oversaw a deadly crackdown on widespread protests. 

The U.S. side will be led by President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to the White House.

“The President has obviously been quite clear in his demands of the Iranian regime,” Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday during a press briefing. “Zero nuclear capability is something he’s been very explicit about.”

Iranian state-run media published photos and videos early on Friday of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in the Omani capital, where he met with his local counterpart.

“Iran enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year. We engage in good faith and stand firm on our rights,” Araghchi said on social media on Friday.

The talks, which were expected to begin at 10 a.m. local time, followed weeks of escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran, fueled in part by massive protests that have roiled Iran.

Those protests began in Tehran in late December in response to the collapse of the Iranian currency and the worsening of economic conditions, and then quickly took on a political character — with crowds on the streets openly calling for regime change.

Iranian authorities responded by launching a brutal crackdown on protests, according to observers. At least 6,495 protesters, along with hundreds of members of the state’s security forces, have been killed, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency, an activist group. The group said it was reviewing thousands of other cases of possible deaths. ABC News cannot independently verify those figures.

As those protests escalated in January, Trump voiced concern for the protesters, saying, “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Trump later in January said a “massive Armada” was heading toward the region. He warned Tehran to make a nuclear deal, saying another U.S. attack would be “far worse” than the U.S. strike on nuclear sites within Iran in June of last year.

The Iranian foreign minister responded by saying the country’s military had “their fingers on the trigger.”

Those tensions had to some extent begun to thaw by last week, when Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said he had instructed Araghchi to pursue “fair and equitable” talks with Washington. The White House had sought help from regional allies, who assisted in bringing Iran back to the negotiating table, according to both countries.

Araghchi said on Friday that any commitments made between the two countries “need to be honored,” adding, “Equal standing, mutual respect and mutual interest are not rhetoric — they are a must and the pillars of a durable agreement.”

Members of the Trump administration last held a series of nuclear talks with Iran in April and May 2025 in Oman. A round of those talks planned for June was scuttled after Israel launched aerial strikes on Iran, an attack that the U.S. later joined.

Senior U.S. officials have continued publicly voicing concerns about the Iranian leadership in the days since the latest round of talks were announced.

“The Iranian regime does not reflect the people of Iran, nor their culture rooted within a deep history,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday. “I know of no other country where there’s a bigger difference between the people who lead the country and the people who live there.”

The virtual U.S. Embassy in Iran posted on Thursday a security alert again calling for all U.S. citizens to depart Iran, provided it’s safe for them to do so. 

“If you cannot leave, find a secure location within your residence or another safe building,” the alert said.

Leavitt on Thursday said Trump was seeking a deal with Iran, but, she added, “I would remind the Iranian regime that the President has many options at his disposal, aside from diplomacy, as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of the world.”

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(VENICE, Italy) — One of the world’s most iconic cities could be heavily impacted by climate change and sea level rise in the coming years, leading researchers to search for solutions on how to protect it.

Venice, the historic Italian city known for its canals that serve as water traffic corridors, has been said to be sinking for nearly a century. The site within the vicinity of the Venetian Lagoon has flooded increasingly over the past 150 years, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports on Thursday.

Historically, there have been 28 events in which seawater flooding impacted at least 60% of the city, according to the paper. Eighteen of those events have taken place in the last century.

Piero Lionello, a professor of atmospheric physics and oceanography at the University of Salento in Italy and native Venetian, has noticed an uptick in flooding events throughout his lifetime, he told ABC News.

“The rate has been quite impressive the last three decades,” he said.

Climate experts are now calling for long-term planning to protect the city from rising sea levels over the next several centuries.

The Venetian Lagoon is a “special system” because it is so connected to the Adriatic Sea, said Lionello, the lead author of the paper.

Proposed strategies to prevent flooding as sea levels rise include movable barriers, ring dikes — which are circular or oval-shaped embankments designed to protect localized areas from floodwaters — or even closing the Venetian Lagoon and relocating the city, according to the paper.

Currently, the city is defended by a trio of movable barriers at the edge of the Venetian Lagoon. The MOSE project, installed in the 1990s, is a system of mobile flood barrier shields as tall as a five-story building that can be raised to separate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea during high tides.

The system allows the waterways of Venice to function normally during high tide and has prevented flood disasters from storm surge. But it won’t be sufficient in the future, Lionello said.

“The present system, it will certainly be become inadequate,” he said.

The existing movable barriers may be effective against sea level rise up to 1.25 meters, or about 4.1 feet, according to the paper. But this benchmark is likely to be exceeded by the year 2300 under a low-emissions scenario due to rising global temperatures and ground subsidence — the gradual sinking of the ground — the researchers said.

Dikes may be necessary to protect Venice’s city center from the rest of the lagoon, according to the paper. The dikes would consist of walls surrounding the city, separating it from the lagoon, Lionello said.

Construction of dikes could cost between $600 million and $5.3 billion, according to the paper.

A “super levee” that could cost more than $35 billion to construct may be needed to close the lagoon and protect the land that is already below sea level.

If sea levels rise enough, it may be necessary for the city’s residents and historic landmarks to be moved inland, the researchers said. Relocating the city could be necessary beyond a 4.5-meter, or nearly 15-foot, sea level rise, which is projected to occur after 2300 under a high emissions scenario, according to the paper. Relocating the city could cost up to $118 billion, according to the researchers.

This solution is the most “provocative” and would involve moving individual buildings and monuments inland, Lionello said.

“You can preserve a building. You can have different solution to keep people living there, but it will be a completely different Venice from the Venice that we have now,” Lionello said.

The system of mobile barriers has been working overtime, according to officials. The MOSE barriers were lifted from the seabed to stop water from the Adriatic Sea from entering the lagoon 31 times during a six-month period between October 2023 and April 2024.

Climate scientists have predicted a steady rise in sea levels in the Adriatic Sea — with the lagoonal ecosystem in Venice experiencing relative sea level rise of about 2.5 millimeters per year, a 2021 study found.

Over the past 60 years, high tides in the Venetian Lagoon have become more frequent.

Between 1870 and 1949, 30 high tides exceeded 1.1 meters — or 3.6 feet — the level above which the MOSE barrier system is activated, according to the Venice Tide Study Center. There were 76 such high tides between 2015 and 2024 alone.

Rapid action to protect the city of Venice from climate change is “essential,” especially since the construction of large-scale interventions could take decades, the researchers said.

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LONDON — After talks in Geneva on Tuesday between the U.S. and Iran over the latter’s nuclear energy program and trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iranian officials expressed optimism for a deal while US-Russia-Ukraine discussions are expected to resume on Wednesday.

Following the talks with Iran, a U.S. official said that “progress was made, but there are still a lot of details to discuss.” 

The U.S. official said that the Iranians said they will “come back in the next two weeks with detailed proposals to address some of the open gaps in our positions.”

But U.S. Vice President JD Vance in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday said the Iranians aren’t acknowledging some “red lines” that U.S. President Donald Trump has set.

“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 said. “So, we’re going to keep on working it. But of course, the president reserves the ability to say when he thinks that diplomacy has reached its natural end. We hope we don’t get to that point, but if we do, that will be the president’s call.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said a “window of opportunity,” has opened with this second round of negotiations. Araqchi made the comments while giving a speech to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament after Tuesday’s talks. 

“We are hopeful that negotiation will lead to a sustainable and negotiated solution which can serve the interests of relevant parties and the broader region. At the same time, as demonstrated during the aggression of 13 June 2025, Iran remains fully prepared to defend itself against any threat or act of aggression,” Araqchi said in English. 

Araqchi also noted the “conduct” of the U.S. “has seriously undermined the credibility of the negotiating process,” referring to the US withdrawal from the JCPOA during the first Trump administration. 

“The unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], in clear violation of an internationally endorsed agreement, dealt a profound blow to trust and stability of multilateral obligations,” Araqchi added.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — also led American negotiators in Geneva in high-stakes talks on Tuesday regarding Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which lasted about six hours, Russian state media TASS reported.

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Rustem Umerov said the talks focused on “practical issues,” and “the mechanics of possible solutions,” in a post on Telegram Tuesday evening. 

Both Russia and Ukraine confirmed talks will continue Wednesday.

The talks on Ukraine are in a trilateral format, which include American, Ukrainian and Russian representatives. They are the third installment of the trilateral format following two rounds of negotiations in the United Arab Emirates.

Those previous trilateral talks were described as constructive by participants but appeared to have failed to achieve a breakthrough on key contentious points, such as the fate of Ukraine’s partially occupied eastern Donbas region, the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and proposed Western security guarantees for Kyiv.

Asked what he expected ahead of the talks with Russia and Ukraine, Trump on Monday put the onus on Ukraine to “come to the table fast,” appearing to suggest that the U.S. and Russia “are in a position” to make a deal. 

“Well they’re big talks. It’s going to be very easy,” Trump said. “Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you. We are in a position; we want them to come.”

Before the trilateral talks began Tuesday, Russia again heavily attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight with at least 396 drones and 29 missiles of various types, the Ukrainian Air Force said Tuesday morning. 

“It was a combined strike, deliberately calculated to cause as much damage as possible to our energy sector,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X.

In a statement after talks ended on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said negotiators must raise the continuing Russian strikes, especially with the Americans, who proposed that Ukraine and Russia refrain from attacks.

“Ukraine is ready. We do not need war. And we always act symmetrically — we are defending our state and our independence. Likewise, we are ready to move quickly toward a just agreement to end the war,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy said he was waiting on the Ukrainian delegation to report back to him.

Twelve regions of Ukraine were targeted in the Russian strikes and at least nine people, including children, were injured, the Ukrainian president said.

Among the targets was the southern port city of Odesa and the wider region, where “tens of thousands of people are without heat and water supply after the drone strike,” according to Zelenskyy.

Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command said NATO aircraft were scrambled and air defenses put on alert as a response to the Russian strikes. “No violations of the Republic of Poland’s airspace by objects that could pose a threat were recorded,” the command said on X.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down at least 151 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Trump “indirectly” involved in Iran talks

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that he would be “indirectly” involved in Tuesday’s talks with Iran.

“They’ll be very important,” Trump told reporters of the talks. “We’ll see what can happen. Specifically, Iran is a very tough negotiator.”

Trump has said the U.S. wants Iran to end all nuclear enrichment as part of any deal, while American officials have also indicated that the U.S. wants constraints on Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its support of regional proxies.

All three demands have long been U.S. goals, but such proposals have been repeatedly rebuffed by Iranian leaders.

The talks have been preceded by a U.S. military buildup in the Middle East, with officials in Tehran warning that Iranian forces will retaliate against U.S. and Israeli targets if Iran is attacked.

The latest round of talks also come in the aftermath of a major anti-regime uprising in Iran, in which protests — initially sparked by the deteriorating economic conditions inside the country — spread nationwide. Trump offered his support to the demonstrators, telling them to “keep protesting,” saying, “help is on its way.”

Security forces violently suppressed the demonstrations, killing at least 7,000 people according to data published by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

ABC News’ Anne Flaherty, Lalee Ibssa, Joseph Simonetti, Fidel Pavlenko, Natalia Popova and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

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