Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Donald Trump in the US capitol Washington on February 11, with Iran’s nuclear programme and the wider regional fallout from renewed diplomacy high on the agenda.

According to The Journal Gazette, the visit comes as the United States resumes indirect talks with Iran in an effort that has unsettled Tel Aviv and served to rattle a number of Gulf allies worried that any miscalculation by either side could tip the region back into open conflict. Netanyahu’s office on February 7 said the prime minister would press Washington to ensure any diplomatic agreements made with Tehran go beyond nuclear issues to address Iran’s active ballistic missile programme and its long-held backing for extremist allied militias across the Middle East.

Those concerns were sharpened on February 6 according to the Journal Gazette, when US and Iranian officials held talks in Muscat, Oman - a meeting that has now appeared to expose how far apart the two sides currently remain. The discussions were reportedly framed by both camps afterwards as more exploratory rather than decisive, with diplomats in attendance signalling that the process had effectively reset to an early stage.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has publicly struck an upbeat tone as the US heads into Super Bowl weekend and he did find time to deem the Oman meeting as constructive, and confirmed that further talks are planned early next week.

The US delegation included Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in a demonstration of the White House’s preference for a tightly held negotiating team answerable directly to the president.

For much of the past month, the diplomatic outreach has been accompanied by an unmistakable show of US force in the region with Trump repeatedly warning Tehran that military action remains an option if Iran refuses to curb its nuclear activities. To this end, in recent weeks, Washington has reinforced its military posture in the region, deploying the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln alongside a range of air force capabilities moving to multiple bases across the region.

For Gulf Arab states at present, the stakes are uncomfortably high the report adds. Many fear that any strike on Iran, whether by the US or Israel, could spiral into a broader regional war that would inevitably draw them in.

In a notable escalation of US engagement that was not missed across the Middle East, Washington brought its top military commander in the Middle East into play for the first time in this round of talks. Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, joined Witkoff and Kushner on a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln this weekend, showing the close coordination between US diplomacy and deterrence efforts.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, have sought to lower the temperature as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi indicated that negotiations over the nuclear file could only progress in an environment free of pressure and threats.

For now, what Tehran is ultimately prepared to concede remains unclear. Iranian leaders have insisted the discussions should focus more narrowly on the nuclear programme. However, regional media reports across the Middle East suggest that intermediaries from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar have already floated a broader proposal that would ultimately see Iran pause uranium enrichment for several years, export its most highly enriched stockpiles and agree to commit to a number of restraints on missile use. Yet multiple local news sources late on February 7 pointed to the uranium enrichment factor being an issue Iran was not willing to let go off just yet.

Washington has made clear it wants more though, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying earlier in the week that any agreement would need to address not just nuclear activity but also missiles and Iran’s regional posture. That gap between ambition and reality is likely to loom large when Netanyahu sits down with Trump, as Israel seeks to again shape US strategy.

As the Israeli leader makes his trip to the US though, Iran has now warned that it would strike American military bases across the Middle East if US forces were to launch an attack.

“It would not be possible to attack American soil, but we will target their bases in the region,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was quoted as saying in an interview with Qatari Al Jazeera television by multiple US sources.

Araghchi signalled that while Iran has no intention of striking the United States itself, any American military action would be met with retaliation against US installations hosted by regional allies.

The inflammatory remarks served to bolster anti-Iranian rhetoric on some US news channels overnight Saturday into Sunday, February 8.

On the diplomatic front, Iranian officials have indicated that the Oman discussions, while representing a useful opening, are also reliant on consultations back in Tehran and Washington in the coming days.

To the wider world, the substance of the talks remains uncertain. Iran at present continues to insist that negotiations focus narrowly on its nuclear activities, resisting US efforts to broaden the agenda to include ballistic missiles as per Netanyahu’s efforts, while US officials, meanwhile, have made clear that any durable agreement would need to address what they see as the full spectrum of Iran’s destabilising behaviour – uranium-enrichment, associated military capabilities and long-standing links to what it sees as terrorist groups throughout the region.