In a news conference on April 7, United States President Donald Trump said there were direct talks between Iran and his administration on the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“We’re having direct talks with Iran,” Trump said. “On Saturday, we have a very big meeting.”

Iran denied the direct talks but admitted talks were set to take place through Omani mediation.

Trump’s announcement came as a surprise to many, as Iran has long refused to hold direct talks. So, has something changed?

Here’s everything we know so far.

What did Trump say?

Interestingly, he has doubled down on the talks being “direct”, saying they have begun and the next meeting would be on Saturday.

“A lot of people say, oh, maybe you’re going through surrogates or you’re not dealing directly, you’re dealing through other countries,” he said.

“No, we’re dealing with them directly. And maybe a deal’s going to be made.

“Doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious,” he said, presumably in reference to attacking the regional giant, something that US ally Israel has done twice in the last 12 months.

In early March, Trump told reporters that he had written to Iranian authorities demanding talks on the country’s nuclear programme and threatening military action if there was no reply.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said at the time that Iran would not negotiate with “bullying governments”.

Trump has until now applied what he calls a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, consisting of intensified sanctions.

What did Iran say?

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said indirect talks between himself and US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff would take place in Oman.

“It is as much an opportunity as it is a test,” Araghchi wrote on X.

Iran has long said it will not hold direct talks with the US, but agreed to work through an Omani intermediary, who was announced by Iranian state media to be Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi.

Iran and the United States will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect high-level talks.

It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 7, 2025

Iran’s messaging has oscillated between an openness to negotiate and rejection of the US’s threatening tactics.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in September that direct talks were possible if the US showed it was amenable to good-faith talks.

“We are not hostile towards the US. They should end their hostility towards us by showing their goodwill in practice,” Pezeshkian said at the time. “We are brothers with the Americans as well.”

However, earlier this week, Araghchi questioned Washington’s sincerity in calling for negotiations, saying on Sunday, “If you want negotiations, then what is the point of threatening?”

What would Trump want to negotiate?

Despite bombing Yemen and allowing Israel to have a free hand in Lebanon and Syria as well as to restart the war on Gaza, Trump says he wants to be seen as a “peacemaker”.

He says he wants to negotiate Iran’s nuclear programme, to make sure that Iran never builds a nuclear weapon.

During his first term in office, Trump actually withdrew the US from a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that curbed Iran’s nuclear programme in return for some sanctions relief.

After withdrawing, Trump reapplied sanctions. He said any agreement with Iran would have to limit its conventional weapons arsenal as well, not just the nuclear programme.

In recent weeks, he has said Iran is materially aiding Yemen’s Houthis, blaming Iran whenever the Houthis launch an attack on Israel or what they say is Israel-linked shipping in the Arabian or Red seas.

It is not clear if that will come up in negotiations.

Trump may also want to discuss Iran’s increased oil sales to China.

What would Iran want to negotiate?

Iran is interested in sanctions relief to ease economic pressure on Tehran as the country suffers an economic crisis that has hit all sectors of society.

This would include assurances that Iran would be able to access the SWIFT money transfer system as well as international investment.

However, Iran also wants recognition of its nuclear programme, including the right to some level of enrichment and to use its centrifuges, built since 2018.

That said, the two sides’ starting positions are further apart than when negotiations first started on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), widely known as the “Iran nuclear deal”.

Iran is asking for more extensive sanctions relief than provided under Obama, while Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if they don’t cut a deal.

Isn’t there already a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme?

Yes, the JCPOA.

As we mentioned above, it exchanged assurances from Iran on limiting its nuclear programme for sanctions relief.

Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018, and his close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been one of the loudest voices opposing the JCPOA.

Trump and Netanyahu are in agreement, saying the JCPOA didn’t go far enough for long enough, in reference to the JCPOA only prohibiting certain nuclear activities for 10 to 15 years.

They said Iran’s conventional weapons programme should be included in any deal with Iran, and that any relief the Iranian economy receives would only enable Tehran to fund its regional allies to carry out activities assumed to “threaten Israel’s security”.

How close is Iran to a nuclear weapon?

No one really knows.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and it does not want to develop a nuclear weapon.

Supreme Leader Khamenei issued a religious ruling to that effect in 2003, and that has been the cornerstone of Iran’s nuclear policy since.

Some Western analysts claim that, in terms of capabilities, Iran is incredibly close to a nuclear weapon.

In March 2025, Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, raised concerns over Iran’s enrichment of uranium. Iran has a stockpile of uranium enriched to about 60 percent, the only non-nuclear state to have that.

While Iran has maintained that it does not want a nuclear weapon, Iranian leaders have made it clear that the decision rests solely with them.

In March, Khamenei said: “If we wanted to build nuclear weapons, the US would not be able to stop it.”

President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on more than 180 trading partners of the United States last week.

He described these as “reciprocal tariffs” against countries that impose heavy duties on US imports, aimed at rebalancing a global trade equation that he has long argued is weighted against his country.

The president has cited imbalanced US trade to justify his argument. Indeed, the US has the largest trade deficit in the world and, in 2023, its import costs were $1.1 trillion more than its exports.

However, some of his tariff targets are sparsely populated islands that barely trade with the US and pose little economic challenge to the world’s largest economy.

Still, others are countries that the US has a trade surplus with — raising questions about the Trump administration’s formula for calculating the tariffs, even as it says that dozens of countries are lining up to negotiate with Washington on lowering the duties slapped on their goods.

So what is the tariff formula used by the Trump team? Which are some of the hardest-to-explain targets? And can negotiations help these and other countries and territories?

How did Trump calculate the reciprocal tariffs?

When Trump announced the tariffs, he held up a chart listing the “reciprocal tariff” percentages for each country and territory next to the tariffs that he claimed these nations and territories were imposing on US imports.

In fact, he claimed that he was being gentle and imposing tariffs that were half, in many cases, of the tariffs that he said the target countries were imposing on US goods.

But, in reality, the formula used by the Trump administration to calculate what it says are reciprocal tariffs has nothing to do with the tariffs imposed by other countries on the US at all.

Instead, to determine its tariff rate for a country, the administration has divided the trade deficit by two times the value of total imports from that country and multiplied the resulting number by 100 to obtain a percentage value.

A trade deficit occurs when a country’s imports are worth more than its exports, while a surplus refers to when exports are of higher value than imports.

For example, the US trade deficit with China in 2024 was $295bn and the total imports from China were $439bn. Dividing the deficit by the imports yields 0.67, and this number halved is 0.34. Trump has imposed a reciprocal tariff of 34 percent on China. The equation does not actually factor in the tariff percentage that China has imposed on US products.

And the Trump administration has not followed even this formula uniformly — if it did, there should be no tariffs imposed on countries and territories with which the US has a trade surplus.

Here are some of Trump’s most bizarre tariff targets:

Islands with few people, negligible trade:

Heard Island and McDonald Islands

Trump hit the Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, about 1,700km (1,056 miles) from Antarctica and 4,000km (2,485 miles) from Perth city, with a 10 percent tariff.

These islands are not inhabited by people, but instead by seals, penguins, and other flying bird species.

World Bank data shows that in 2022, the US imported products worth $1.4m from the islands. Most of these products are unnamed “electronics and machinery”. In 2024, the US did not trade at all with the territory, according to US Census data.

Australian leaders, including Trade Minister Don Farrell, speculated that Trump tariffed the islands by mistake. “Poor old penguins, I don’t know what they did to Trump, but, look, I think it’s an indication, to be honest with you, that this was a rushed process,” Farrell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on April 4.

But Trump’s aides insist that this was not a mistake.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News on Sunday that the islands were tariffed so that Trump’s other tariff targets do not try to bypass their tariffs by exporting their products to the US through remote islands like Heard and McDonald. “If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us,” said Lutnick.

Norfolk Island

Trump also slapped a 29 percent tariff on another Australian territory, Norfolk Island.

The territory is in the South Pacific Ocean, about 1,600km (990 miles) northeast of Sydney, with a population of about 2,000. World Bank data shows that the US imported goods worth $273,000 in 2022 from the territory. Most of these goods were labelled as “chemicals”.

In 2024, the US had a trade deficit of $100,000 with Norfolk Island.

“I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States, but that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on earth is safe from this,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, speaking of the tariffs imposed on the territory.

Cocos Island

Cocos or Keeling Islands is another Australian territory in the Indian Ocean with a 10 percent tariff.

The island with 544 people had a trade surplus of $1.5m with the US in 2024.

Christmas Island

Yet another Australian territory in the Indian Ocean – home to 1,692 people – Christmas Island also faces a 10 percent US tariff.

In 2024, the territory had a trade surplus of $400,000 with the US. A quarter of the island’s exports go to the US, where it sends paintings, amine compounds  — chemicals used for making nylon and dyes — and broadcasting equipment, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Tokelau

This territory of New Zealand in the Southern Pacific Ocean has been hit with a 10 percent tariff by the US.

In 2024, Tokelau had a $100,000 trade surplus with the US, exporting $200,000 worth of products. The total population of these atolls is 2,600, according to World Population Review.

Reunion

Trump has charged Reunion, a small French overseas department in the Indian Ocean, with a 37 percent tariff, according to a chart shared on X by the White House on April 2. The island is about 9,000km (5,600 miles) from France.

Its total population is 882,000, according to the latest World Population Review data. The US had a $32.2m trade deficit with Reunion in 2024.

British Indian Ocean Territory

Trump has hit the overseas British territory with 10 percent tariffs — even though its only real trading hub is a military base that the US counts as among its most strategic footholds in the Indian Ocean.

The territory, a group of several islands, does not have a permanent population. However, there is a joint military base of the US and the United Kingdom on its largest island, Diego Garcia. Some 4,000 people, mostly military personnel, inhabit this base.

The US had a $5m trade deficit with the territory in 2024, which exported products worth $500,000 to the country last year.

Like many of these small islands, large countries that the US has a trade surplus with too have been hit with tariffs — defying the formula used to justify levies.

Countries the US has a trade surplus with

Australia

The US has imposed a 10 percent tariff on Australia, saying Canberra charges it 10 percent tariffs.

Australia is a strange target because the US does not have a trade deficit with the country, a variable that falls at the centre of the tariff calculation. In 2024, it enjoyed a trade surplus of $17.9bn with Australia, according to US Census data.

In 2023, 3.57 percent of Australian exports went to the US. Responding to the tariffs on Australia, Albanese said: “The administration’s tariffs have no basis in logic and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership.”

United Kingdom

Trump has hit the UK with a 10 percent tariff as a reciprocal move.

The US also does not have a trade deficit with the UK, instead, it had a trade surplus of nearly $12bn.

In 2023, nearly 24 percent of the UK’s exports went to the US.

Netherlands

Trump has hit the Netherlands, alongside other countries in the European Union, with a 20 percent tariff. However, the US does not have a trade deficit with the country. In fact, in 2024, it had a surplus of nearly $56bn.

Vaccines are the Netherlands’ top export to the US.

Belgium

As a part of the EU, Belgium faces a 20 percent US tariff.

In 2024, the US had approximately $6.3bn of trade surplus with Belgium.

Brazil

Brazil faces a 10 percent tariff from the US despite its trade deficit of $7.4bn in 2024.

The US is the second-largest market for Brazilian exports after accounting for 10.4 percent of its exports.

Do negotiations matter at all?

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC’s Meet the Press that more than 50 countries had reached out to the US to negotiate the tariffs.

However, it is unclear what those talks will be about since the tariffs imposed by Trump are not reciprocal — contrary to the US claims — and are based, in many cases, instead on its trade deficit with those nations. And even countries with which the US has a trade surplus have not been left unscathed.

In many ways, say experts, all of this underscores what the tariffs are really about — and what they are not about.

The goal of Trump’s tariff announcement was not to display mathematical precision, but it was to display power, Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a China studies fellow at Indian public policy centre Takshashila Institution, told Al Jazeera.

The tariffs are aimed at bringing countries to the negotiating table to discuss broader US economic concerns, he suggested. “Now whether that’s actually what’s going to happen as an outcome remains to be seen.”

It is also unclear whether the US is open to negotiations. While Trump’s close aide billionaire Elon Musk has expressed hopes for “a zero-tariff situation” between the US and Europe, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the tariffs are here to stay.

Ultimately, Kewalramani said, Trump’s stated goal is to reindustrialise the US and create jobs. “I don’t think the tariff policy is aimed at achieving one goal, but instead was a silver bullet thought in Trump’s head,” he said.

“Maybe to some extent, it will stimulate industry, but it won’t bring back the jobs that went away 35 years ago,” Kewalramani said.

What it will do, he said, is reduce overall trade. “If Trump wants to see that as a reduction of deficit, fair enough.”

Average global temperature in March was 1.6C higher than in pre-industrial times, threatening that international climate goals are moving out of reach.

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs last month, and Europe experienced its warmest March, suggesting international climate goals could be moving out of reach.

The average temperature in March in Europe climbed to above 6 degrees Celsius (42.8 Fahrenheit), which is 0.26C (0.468F) above the previous hottest March in 2014. The average global temperature last month was 1.6C (2.88F) higher than in pre-industrial times, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Tuesday.

The findings, contained in C3S’s monthly report, underscore growing concerns that the international goal of limiting global warming by the year 2100 to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels is slipping out of reach.

Scientists have warned that every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts.

Samantha Burgess, strategic lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the C3S service, noted that Europe experienced extremes in both heavy rain and drought in March.

Europe last month recorded “many areas experiencing their driest March on record and others their wettest March on record for at least the past 47 years”, Burgess said.

Scientists said climate change also intensified an extreme heatwave across Central Asia and fuelled conditions for extreme rainfall in countries like Argentina.

Arctic sea ice also fell to its lowest monthly extent last month for any March in the 47-year record of satellite data, C3S said. The previous three months also set record lows.

The EU monitor uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its climate calculations. Its records go back to 1940.

The main driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, according to climate scientists.

But even as the costs of disasters due to climate change spiral, the political will to invest in curbing emissions has waned in some countries.

United States President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax”, despite the global scientific consensus that it is human-caused and will have severe consequences if not addressed.

In January, Trump signed an executive order to have the US withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming and once again distancing the US from its closest allies.

In 2015, nearly 200 nations agreed in Paris that limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels offered the best chance of preventing the most catastrophic repercussions of climate change.

However, Trump’s order says the Paris accord is among a number of international agreements that do not reflect US values and “steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people”.

Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London told the AFP news agency that the world is “firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change”.

“That we’re still at 1.6C above pre-industrial is indeed remarkable,” she said.