On Saturday, initial meetings between Washington and Tehran took place in Oman on the subject of the Iranian nuclear program. The two sides agreed to continue talks this coming weekend. Elliott Abrams believes that, so far, Iran has come out ahead:

First, the United States demanded direct negotiations while Iran wanted indirect talks. The talks in Oman were indirect, with the Omani foreign minister as go-between. It seems that there was a hello chat and handshake between the U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Aragchi, but no more than that.

Second, the key critique of the JCPOA, the 2015 Obama-Iran agreement, noted that it dealt only with nuclear weapons and ignored both Iran’s support for terrorist proxies and Iran’s missile program. According to press reports, the talks in Oman dealt only with nuclear matters. That is exactly what Iran wants.

Third, the United States appears to be signaling weakness right from the start—abandoning the goal of ending Iran’s nuclear program.

Instead Witkoff has signaled a willingness to accept a JCPOA-style deal, where Iran maintains the capacity to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, while promising not to use it for this purpose. Abrams continues:

If President Trump wants a quick and dirty deal, Iran will be sure to oblige—in return for an end to some or most U.S. sanctions. Then, once again, there will be an agreement that, [in the words of the first Trump administration’s criticism of the JCPOA], “enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.”

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.