• White House tells Iran to be wise, strike deal
• Iran issues NOTAM over planned rocket launches

PARIS: The United States will deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons “one way or the other”, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump “believes firmly we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran”, Wright told reporters in Paris on the sidelines of meetings of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“They’ve been very clear about what they would do with nuclear weapons. It’s entirely unacceptable,” Wright said.

“So one way or the other, we are going to end, deter Iran’s march tow­ards a nuclear weapon,” he added.

In a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Iran would be “very wise to make a deal” with Trump and his administration.

Also, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said, “We do not want war” though Tehran could not just give in to all US demands.

In a phone call with the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was “drafting” a framework for future talks with the US.

He “stressed Iran’s focus on drafting an initial and coherent framework to advance future talks”, according to a statement from the Iranian foreign ministry about the phone call with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi.

The phone call came a day after a second round of Oman-mediated negotiations between Iran and the US in Geneva aimed at averting the possibility of US military intervention over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Following the talks, Iran said both sides had agreed on “guiding principles” for a deal to avoid conflict. But US Vice President J. D. Vance said Tehran had not yet acknowledged all of Washington’s “red lines”.

Iranian official meets IAEA chief

Earlier on Wednesday, Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA in Vienna, Reza Najafi, held a joint meeting with Rafael Grossi and the ambassadors of China and Russia “to exchange views” on the upcoming session of the agency’s board of governors and “developments related to Iran’s nuclear programme”, Tehran’s mission in Vienna said on X.

While accusing the UN body of bias and of failing to condemn the US strikes in June 2025, Tehran had suspended some cooperation with the IAEA and restricted the watchdog’s inspectors from accessing sites.

As Trump hinted at the possibility of US military intervention in Iran amid Washington’s military build-up in the region, Iran issued a notice to airmen that it plans rocket launches in areas across its south on Thursday (today), the US Federal Aviation Administration website showed.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2026