The meeting did not go as planned. It was not quite as bad as the public humiliation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in February. But it was not much better. The tariffs stayed in place. Mr Trump praised his Turkish counterpart as a friend. And he announced that America would start “direct” talks with Iran on April 12th. “Trump gave Netanyahu a red line: don’t do anything and mess this up,” says one Israeli source. “It was more of a funeral than a wedding.

”The warning was necessary. Israel is feeling bullish. It retaliated against an Iranian missile strike in October by destroying most of the Islamic republic’s air-defence network. “Iran is at its most vulnerable,” says an Israeli security official. He notes that in the past Mr Netanyahu hesitated to give the order to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, but now he has less reason to hold back—apart from Mr Trump. Although the prime minister has defied other presidents publicly, while gaining popularity at home, it is much more difficult for him to say no to Mr Trump. He has “shackled Israel’s foreign policy to him”, according to one Israeli diplomat.

The talks between America and Iran will begin in Oman, a Gulf state that has mediated between America and Iran in the past. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, confirmed the news hours later. He will represent Iran, while Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, is expected to lead the American delegation. The format remains unclear, however. Iran has refused direct negotiations. Mr Araghchi said the meeting in Oman will be indirect: passing messages through the Omanis, rather than meeting in person.

Whatever the format, the talks could not be more urgent. Iran and seven world powers reached a deal in 2015 known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It restricted Iran’s nuclear work in return for sanctions relief. Since Mr Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, however, Iran’s uranium-enrichment programme has soared to unprecedented levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in February that Iran had enriched a record 275kg of uranium to 60% purity, which is close to weapons-grade.

That would be enough to produce six nuclear bombs if refined further. Iran’s “breakout time”, the period it would need to enrich a bomb’s worth of uranium, is now a matter of days or at best weeks. Without a deal, it seems probable that America or Israel (or both) will decide to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites later this year.

Yet it is far from clear what sort of deal both sides want. Start with America. Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, favours an agreement that dismantles Iran’s nuclear facilities. That is Mr Netanyahu’s view as well: he called for a deal “the way that it was done in Libya”, which agreed in 2003 to break up its fledgling nuclear programme.

His choice of words will have alarmed the Iranians. They will remember what came next: Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, was overthrown and killed eight years later. Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is keen for his regime to avoid a similar fate. He views the nuclear programme as an insurance policy, particularly after Israel smashed both Hizbullah, Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, Hamas in Gaza, and Iran’s own air defences. The ayatollah might be willing to mothball Iran’s centrifuges, but not to destroy them.

Fortunately for him, Trumpworld contains multitudes. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, an influential pro-Trump podcaster, Mr Witkoff said his aim was a “verification programme so that nobody worries about weaponisation”. That is a more realistic goal, closer to the original JCPOA, which capped Iran’s uranium stockpile and imposed strict IAEA monitoring.

It also seems to have the president’s support—and that of isolationist Republicans, keen to make a deal and avoid another war in the Middle East. Hours before Mr Netanyahu arrived at the White House, Mr Carlson argued that a military strike would be suicidal. “Anyone advocating for conflict with Iran is not an ally of the United States, but an enemy,” he wrote on X, a social-media platform.

Even a modest deal would require America to make concessions as well. Mr Trump’s advisers have said little about what they might be willing to offer. They would certainly lift sanctions on Iranian oil, allowing it to sell crude on the open market rather than at a discount through shadowy intermediaries.

Iran will also want guarantees that a new deal will be more durable than the old one. They hope it would be a Senate-ratified treaty; but it is unclear if Mr Trump can find 67 votes for that. “It really depends on what the deal looks like, and whether you can get normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia at the same time,” says one Republican senator.

Time is short. Asked how long they think Mr Trump would be willing to negotiate, several American, Israeli and Arab sources gave the same answer: a few months. The JCPOA took two years. When John Kerry flew to Vienna to negotiate the deal, he was often joined by Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary. Mr Moniz, a nuclear physicist by training, helped work out the technical details. The Trump administration so far lacks such expertise.

Another factor limiting the time for talks is the American military build-up already under way in the region. B-2 stealth bombers have been deployed to an advance base in the Indian Ocean. A second aircraft carrier is on its way. They are meant to show Iran that the threat of a strike is real. But this level of forces, costly at a time the Pentagon is making cuts, cannot be maintained for long. Drawing it down prematurely could send the wrong messages: a lack of determination to the Iranians; and encouragement to the Israelis to go it alone.

Several regional officials draw a parallel to Mr Witkoff’s talks with Russia. When they began in mid-February Mr Trump seemed optimistic that he could bring the war in Ukraine to a swift end. Almost two months later, the process is bogged down: Vladimir Putin, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a tough negotiating partner.

The risk now is that something similar happens with Iran. The Islamic Republic likes to procrastinate: whenever a deal seems close, it adds more demands. A hasty deal will probably be a shoddy one—what one former American ambassador to Israel calls a “JCPOA-lite”. Iran has mastered the nuclear-fuel cycle over the past few years; a deal that allows its centrifuges to remain intact, even under IAEA seal, would leave it a few months from breakout (the JCPOA kept it a year away). Mr Netanyahu may hope he still has enough allies in Washington to spike such an agreement, if it happens. This week’s meeting with Mr Trump may have been a disappointment. If America’s talks with Iran flounder, though, the next one may be more to his liking.