Europe to Hold Talks With Iran on Friday

As President Trump decides whether to go to war in Iran, key European countries are pursuing a diplomatic path, hoping to find a negotiated solution and de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran before it engulfs the region.

After several days of back-channel discussions, foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany, together with Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, are scheduled to hold talks on Friday with their Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

If the meeting, scheduled for Geneva, takes place, it would be the most significant European involvement since Israel launched its surprise attacks against Iran last week. And it would be the first in-person discussions between Iran and the West since Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and other sites.

Mr. Trump is evidently in no hurry but will wait to see how the war goes and the talks with Iran play out. Later Thursday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that he will decide “within the next two weeks” whether to strike Iran. Mr. Trump, his press secretary told reporters, still sees “a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future,” so in effect he is postponing a decision he had suggested was imminent.

But it remains far from certain whether any talks can succeed at a moment when both sides seem intent on trading blows, whether the United States will pursue a competing diplomatic track, whether Iran is prepared to concede on ending its enrichment of uranium or what President Trump’s intentions actually are.

The president has at times suggested that he might send Vice President JD Vance and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to renewed negotiations of their own. At other times he has seemed to favor an all-out Israeli victory aided by American, “bunker-buster” bomb strikes on the deeply embedded Iranian facility called Fordo.