The next round of scheduled nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran will not take place on Sunday, Omanian Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi announced on Saturday evening, as Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes.

Albusaidi said that the talks, intended to be the sixth round of negotiations, “will not now take place. But diplomacy and dialogue remain the only pathway to lasting peace.”

A senior U.S. administration official told The New York Times, “While there will be no meeting Sunday, we remain committed to talks and hope the Iranians will come to the table soon.” President Donald Trump had exerted additional pressure, writing on Truth Social on Friday that “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire … JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

In a Truth Social post on Saturday afternoon, Trump said that “we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict,” noting that the “U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight” but that if the U.S. was “attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down” on Tehran “at levels never seen before.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkain reportedly said on a call with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday that Iran will not “accept irrational demands under pressure” or “sit at the negotiating table while the Zionist regime continues its attacks.” 

The talks’ cancellation comes following Israel’s preemptive attack early Friday morning on Iranian nuclear and military targets, and Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel.

The IDF said Saturday night it had completed “an extensive series of strikes” on targets including the Iranian Ministry of Defense and its nuclear research and development headquarters. Iranian state media reported strikes on several oil facilities, including the South Pars field shared between Iran and Qatar, the largest natural gas field in the world. 

Iran fired around 70 ballistic missiles and several drones at Israel on Saturday night and early Sunday morning, sending Israelis across the country into bomb shelters. Direct impacts were reported in the northern Arab city of Tamra — killing four civilians — and the central cities of Bat Yam, where at least six civilians were killed and 200 wounded, and Rehovot, where at least 40 were wounded and laboratories at The Weizmann Institute of Science were reportedly damaged. The Bazan oil refinery in Haifa was also damaged in the attack, though its refining activities continue, its operating company reported on Sunday. 

Saturday night’s strikes bring the death toll in Israel from the Iranian attacks to at least 13 with 380 people injured.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is set to introduce a resolution affirming that the only acceptable outcome of U.S. nuclear talks with Iran would be the total dismantlement of its enrichment program, Jewish Insider has learned. Graham says he hopes to introduce the legislation on Thursday. 

Graham first unveiled the resolution last month alongside Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) in response to President Donald Trump’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Many Republicans on Capitol Hill have grown wary that the Trump administration could agree to a deal with terms akin to former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement, though Graham has expressed confidence that Trump would not allow for any enrichment, citing recent private conversations with the president.

The original text of the resolution commends the Trump administration for engaging directly with the Iranians while calling out the regime’s “decades of cheating,” its “barbaric nature, and its open commitment to destroying the State of Israel,” all of which Graham says must be addressed in a deal. It affirms his support for the “complete dismantlement and destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s entire nuclear program.”

The resolution also backs a subsequent agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation, also known as a “123 Agreement,” requiring Tehran to adopt the International Atomic Energy Agency’s protocols for verification of nuclear safeguards and “forgo domestic uranium enrichment, the reprocessing of spent fuel, and the development or possession of any enrichment or reprocessing infrastructure or capacity.”

Speaking to JI on Tuesday, Graham said he has been engaging with the White House and Israeli leadership to ensure that all parties approve of the resolution’s language. The South Carolina senator said that he is in the process of making alterations to the resolution at the request of both sides.

“We’re working with the White House, they want some changes. I sent it to Israel, they want some changes,” Graham said. 

He says he hopes the resolution will receive a floor vote by next week, though he did not say if or when he plans to try to force floor consideration on it. 

“It’d be the most destabilizing thing in the world, I believe, if Iran ever acquired a nuclear weapon capability. I think the Sunni Arab world would want to go down that road also. You’d have a nuclear arms race in the Mideast, but more importantly to me, I think they would use it. I think if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would use it as part of their radical religious regime,” Graham said at a press conference on his resolution last month. 

“The Ayatollah and his henchmen are virtual religious Nazis. They openly talk about destroying the State of Israel. They write it on the side of their missiles. And I believe them. I believe that they want to purify Islam, take over the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, wipe out the Jewish state and drive us out of the Mideast. And a nuclear weapon is part of that agenda. It’s not an insurance policy for regime survivability. It is a weapon to carry out one of the most extreme, religious ideas on the planet,” he continued. 

With the Middle East in flux from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria and Iran, any week in the last 600 days would have been a busy one in Jerusalem. Still, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) arrived in Israel on Monday at a particularly significant moment, with nuclear talks with Iran reaching a critical juncture and the U.S. and Israel moving forward with a plan to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Israel is one stop in McCormick’s first trip abroad after becoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism earlier this year. 

“There are so many issues that will be coming before the Senate … so it felt like it was appropriate to come and get the truth on the ground,” McCormick said in an interview with Jewish Insider in Jerusalem on Tuesday. “We wanted to come to Israel as a show of solidarity. It’s a very tough time now, in the aftermath of [Israeli Embassy staffers] Yaron [Lischinsky] and Sarah [Milgrim] killed in Washington, and all the polarization and the challenges with Gaza and Iran.”

In between a visit to the Western Wall and minutes before his meeting with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the group implementing the American-Israeli Gaza aid plan, which has come under fire from international aid groups on the ground, McCormick spoke with JI about the significant issues on his agenda. Tech investor Liran Tancman, one of the Israelis involved in arranging the aid distribution program, took part in the meeting with McCormick and GHF as well. 

The GHF began distributing aid on Monday, though it had to pause at one point on Tuesday, reportedly due to overcrowding. Additionally, Hamas members reportedly threatened Gazans who cooperated with the American-led effort.

“I certainly recognize … how complex a problem this is,” McCormick said. “On one hand, you want to give the humanitarian assistance that is needed to make sure innocents are able to have the support they need. But it’s also a tool that’s been hijacked by Hamas as a source of revenue, as a source of leverage and control. So, how do you balance?”

The senator noted positively that hundreds of trucks had already entered Gaza, and expressed hope that the GHF could distribute aid to families in need.

McCormick also pointed out that “this whole thing could end overnight if [Hamas] release[s] the hostages.”

His message for countries such as the U.K., France and others that have threatened action against Israel if it does not allow the U.N. to distribute aid is “to actually look at the complexity of the problem and the good faith efforts that are being taken to address it. I think that will hopefully be confidence-building for them.”

McCormick was also in Israel at a time in which the Trump administration appears increasingly concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not on board with the White House’s efforts to reach a diplomatic deal with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program. Israel is reportedly preparing contingency plans to strike Iran. 

Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem led Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to tell Fox News on Monday that she was dispatched to Israel to tell Netanyahu to allow negotiations to run their course.

The day after meeting with Netanyahu, McCormick said, “Nobody shared any battle plans with me. Obviously, the administration is in close contact with the Israeli government … I think, ultimately, the defining point is Iran can’t have a nuclear program and can’t be on the path to having a nuclear program. That’s a defining goal.”

“I think there is an opportunity because I think Iran is at a weak moment due in part to incredible actions that Israel has taken against the terrorist proxies supported by Iran,” he added. “The political pressure on Iran is at an all-time high, and the capability of the Iranians is at an all-time low. So you’ve got a moment of opportunity, and I’m hoping that forces will come together to make the most of it.”

McCormick argued that Trump and Netanyahu’s remarks on Iran’s nuclear program are consistent with one another.

“I go to what President Trump said, which is full dismantlement of the nuclear program and no enrichment, those are his two red lines, and I listen to what Netanyahu said yesterday, which is, ‘I don’t trust them, but we need full dismantlement of the nuclear program and no enrichment,’” he said.

McCormick noted that former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, said the same thing as Netanyahu about Iran in their meeting. 

“If the deal would come together in line with what President Trump has said, that would be something that would be welcome,” McCormick added. “It would be a huge step forward for the region and a huge step forward for the world.” 

Asked if Republicans in the Senate would accept a deal that fell short of those lines, McCormick first said that while he is not privy to the details of the current negotiations with Iran, “I don’t necessarily believe any of what I read [in the media]. I’ll believe it when I hear the president … I’m not going to talk about something that doesn’t exist yet.” 

The senator pointed to a letter signed by nearly all Senate Republicans urging the president to reject any deal that does not include the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.

“I’ve been with the president when he’s talked about this, and I’ve heard him talk about dismantling [the Iranian nuclear program] … That’s the position that I think he’s taken and that I would take,” he stated.

When one negotiates with Iran, McCormick said, the first consideration must be to “take Iran at its word when it says it wants to destroy Israel and the United States,” and the second is that “there’s a history of untrustworthiness.”

“If you start with those two premises, then you have to get an outcome where the likelihood of a reconstitution of a nuclear Iran program is not something that is in the cards,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress last week that the current negotiations with Iran are only about its nuclear program and not its terror proxies or ballistic missile program, though related sanctions remain in place.

However, McCormick said, “that doesn’t mean U.S. policy is only going to deal with [the nuclear program], and my basic view is Iran has been a bad actor and any … reducing sanctions should also require the complete termination of any support for terrorist proxies.”

Asked if that doesn’t contradict an offer to lift sanctions in exchange for a nuclear-only deal, McCormick said, “I don’t know what the deal is, but any treaty would ultimately come before the Senate and those are the kinds of questions I’ve asked.”

McCormick expressed confidence that the Trump administration would not try to circumvent the Senate, saying that “for any agreement to last, it needs to come through the Senate.”

The senator rejected the framing that there are two dueling foreign policy camps in the Trump administration, the more traditional Republicans and the “restrainers,” saying that Trump has been “very consistent” and that he has “a realpolitik view of supporting American interests.”

“I’ve seen lots of administrations … There are always conflicting views. That’s how good policies are made. You have a policy process where people get to argue and the president gets to decide,” he said.

Trump, McCormick said, has “made it very clear that the Israelis are our closest ally in the Middle East. There is no one that’s done more to support Israel … He’s been very clear on his stance on antisemitism. So listen, these are complex problems … but I think the administration stance has been a very clear one, and the president keeps coming back to peace through strength, which I think is one of the defining pieces of this foreign policy.”

As for the relationship between the U.S. and Qatar, which hosts Hamas leaders in its capital and represents Hamas’ interests in hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Israel, McCormick said: “From a realpolitik perspective, Qatar is an important part of bringing together the possibilities of a peace deal, but I think any funding that’s supporting terrorist organizations or any historical support should be an important consideration in the relationship.”

The senator posited that “our relationship with Qatar is moving in the right direction, but ultimately it depends on changing behavior where it’s not supporting groups that aren’t in line with U.S. objectives or allies of the United States.”

When it comes to concerns that Qatar is spending large sums of money to try to gain favor and influence the U.S., McCormick drew a distinction between the $400 million plane Qatar is planning to gift Trump to be used as Air Force One and then donated to his library, and Qatar’s large contributions to American universities.

McCormick has “concerns about the plane from a security perspective and an intel perspective. Obviously, we want to make sure that … there’s no national security risk associated with it.”

However, he called the donation of the plane “a sort of transaction between the U.S. government in many countries that happens in all sorts of different forms … It’ll go through whatever ethics review.”

McCormick said that funding for universities, however, is a major concern, not only from Qatar but from China, “particularly if there are motivations tied to it.”

“No one has been a stronger voice on antisemitism on campus than me,” he said. “Any foreign money that can be tied to supporting groups that are leading this antisemitism, I’m very opposed to. I think President Trump cracking down on these universities for their antisemitism, looking at the sources of funding, making federal funding contingent on dealing with antisemitism and making sure universities are doing their role is necessary.”