Updated June 20, 2025 at 2:40 PM EDT
PARIS — Foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany met with their Iranian counterpart in Geneva Friday, marking the most significant known diplomatic talks between Tehran and Western governments since Israel launched a surprise offensive against Iran one week ago.
"We were attacked in the midst of an ongoing diplomatic process," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said before the United Nations Human Rights Council, before the meeting. "We were supposed to meet with the Americans on June 15 to craft a very promising agreement for peaceful resolution of the issues fabricated over our peaceful nuclear program."
The meeting comes on a day of renewed efforts to find diplomatic pathways to the crisis, as the United Nations Security Council simultaneously convened in New York to discuss the issue as well, even as Israel and Iran continued to carry out strikes on one another.
The Geneva talks revive the trio of European countries known as the "E3," which led previous negotiations with Iran in the early 2000s and helped broker the 2015 nuclear deal under then-President Barack Obama's administration. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in his first term.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called the situation "perilous" after meeting Thursday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. The State Department said Rubio has had phone calls with the French foreign minister and a number of other Europeans this week.
"A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution," Lammy said, referencing President Trump's announcement that he would make a decision on whether the U.S. will strike Iran by early July.
Israel may think it can destroy Iran's nuclear program without the U.S.
Trump's statement, read out loud by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday, tamped down speculation that the U.S. was poised to assist Israel in its offensive by striking an Iranian nuclear facility.
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A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told NPR that Israeli officials believe Israel can destroy Iran's most fortified nuclear site Fordo on its own — without the U.S. bombing it, but that it would be quicker if the U.S. takes part.
Middle East experts tell NPR that U.S. bunker-busting bombs would do serious damage to the Fordo site, but that does not destroy Iran's know-how to build nuclear weapons in the future.
Lammy and his French and German counterparts are urging Iran to return to nuclear negotiations. Iran, for its part, has signaled resistance while under attack.
"We do not want to negotiate with anyone while the Zionist regime's aggression continues," Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said on state television Friday. He accused the U.S. of being complicit in Israeli strikes, citing social media posts from Trump earlier this week in which he appeared to give the U.S. partial credit for control of Iran's airspace.
"The demand for an end to this war has already begun," Araghchi added. "It shows how effective the resistance of the Iranian people has been and will be."
In France, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot defended his country's neutral stance, saying on national television Thursday that "France is always on the side of international law" and "has not participated in any preventive war." He noted that 1,000 French nationals remain in Iran.
Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, meanwhile, said Berlin was open to further discussions with Iran if there is a "serious willingness" from Tehran to provide assurances on its nuclear and missile programs.
Those assurances, according to Wadephul, would mean Iran renouncing enrichment of nuclear material that would lead to weaponization and would also include reducing its missile program.
Israel is skeptical of the talks
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon cast doubt on the talks in Geneva. "We have seen diplomatic talks for the last few decades and look at the results," he said Friday in New York.
"If there will be a genuine effort to dismantle the [nuclear arm] capabilities of Iran, then that's something we can consider. But it is going to be like another session and debates. That's not going to work," he added.
He was speaking to reporters as the U.N. Security Council was set to discuss the conflict, at Iran's request.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged the body to act to prevent a wider war and return to diplomacy.
"The expansion of this conflict could ignite a fire that no one can control," Guterres told the council. "Let us act — responsibly and together — to pull the region, and our world, back from the brink."
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also told the council a diplomatic solution is within reach. "The IAEA can guarantee through a watertight inspection system that nuclear weapons will not be developed in Iran," he said.
Independent experts say the country has enriched enough uranium for several bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes.
The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea said the administration supports Israel's "actions against Iran's nuclear ambitions."
Shea said, "Iran's leaders could have avoided this conflict had they agreed to a deal that would have prevented them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. But they refused to do so, choosing instead to delay and deny."
Fighting continues
Israel and Iran traded more strikes overnight into Friday, with the Israeli military saying it struck dozens of Iranian military targets around Tehran and western Iran.
In Israel, at least five people were injured after an Iranian missile struck a residential building in the southern city of Beersheba. The strike comes just a day after an Iranian missile hit Soroka Medical Center, the largest hospital in southern Israel.
At least 24 people have been killed by Iranian missile and drone strikes and hundreds more injured since the start of the war, according to the Israeli prime minister's office.
Israel's strikes on Iran have killed more than 200 people, according to Iran's Health Ministry. But an independent group called the Human Rights Activists News Agency says it has recorded 657 killed and more than 2,000 injured in Iran based on nongovernmental sources.
Rebecca Rosman reported from Paris, Alex Leff from Washington, D.C. Rob Schmitz contributed reporting from Berlin, Daniel Estrin from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Michele Kelemen from Washington.
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