On February 27, 2026 — one day before the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — Oman's Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi announced that Iran had agreed to unprecedented nuclear concessions: full and comprehensive verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency, zero stockpiling of enriched uranium, and degradation of existing stockpiles to the lowest possible level by converting them into fuel in an irreversible process. Al Busaidi described the agreement as "something completely new" in the history of US-Iran nuclear negotiations and declared that "a peace deal is within our reach — if we just allow diplomacy the space it needs to get there."
The announcement followed the third round of indirect US-Iran negotiations in Geneva on February 26, which both sides described as the longest and most serious yet. The IAEA simultaneously issued a safeguards report (GOV/2026/8) reflecting ongoing verification efforts. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed the optimism, indicating that a peaceful resolution appeared achievable.
Within 24 hours, Operation Epic Fury obliterated the diplomatic breakthrough. The United States and Israel launched massive coordinated strikes on Iran on February 28, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and destroying nuclear facilities that Iran had just offered to place under full international verification. The juxtaposition was staggering: the most significant Iranian nuclear concession in the history of negotiations — going beyond even the original JCPOA framework — was answered not with diplomacy but with war.
The sequence of events raised fundamental questions about whether the administration ever intended to negotiate in good faith, or whether the Geneva talks served primarily as diplomatic cover while military planning proceeded on a parallel track. The Omani breakthrough demonstrated that a verifiable, peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear question was not merely hypothetical — it was on the table, with Iranian agreement, the day before the bombs fell. That this fact received minimal coverage in the immediate aftermath of the strikes reflected both the fog of war and the administration's success in controlling the narrative around its stated justification of imminent nuclear threat.