For a third straight day, the United States on Wednesday issued sanctions targeting Iran as the Trump administration attempts to negotiate a new nuclear arms deal with the Middle Eastern country.

Iran will hold talks in Istanbul on Friday with European parties to their now-moribund 2015 nuclear deal, two European and an Iranian diplomatic source said on Tuesday,

The latest round of high stakes nuclear talks between Iran and the US have ended, with Tehran calling them difficult but with both sides agreeing to further negotiations.

Plus, Badar Khan Suri, the Georgetown University scholar who was targeted for deportation by the Trump administration is released from federal custody.

Saudi Arabia fully supports the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and hopes for positive results, the kingdom's foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud said on Wednesday.

Nadergholi Ebrahimi has asked Supreme Leader Khamenei to rethink Iran's nuclear policy if negotiations with the U.S. collapse.

Vice President JD Vance said an Iranian nuclear weapon is "off the table" for the Trump administration before talks in Oman, with "complete cessation" the goal.

An Iranian official told CNN that recent indirect talks with the United States aimed at addressing Tehran’s nuclear program and lifting sanctions were “not genuine” from the American side and were likely designed from the outset as a “trap to draw the situation toward tension.

Tehran called Sunday’s meeting “difficult but useful” as the two sides clash over future of Iran’s uranium enrichment.

Iran has said it doesn't seek a nuclear weapon. But the United States is pressing Iran for full denuclearization, urging a voluntary end to enrichment and the abandoning of centrifuges and the raw materials that could lead to a bomb, according to Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff.