Iran agrees in principle to dispose of highly-enriched uranium, official says
Rubio says Iran talks have made “significant progress” but no “final progress” 02:26
Iran agreed in principle to destroy highly enriched uranium. Negotiations with the USAA senior Trump administration official said Sunday morning that a deal likely won’t be signed this weekend.
The official said the United States believes Iran’s supreme leader has approved the agreement template, but a final agreement still needs to be struck before anything is signed.
“The Iranian system is frustratingly slow and opaque, and if I’m playing the devil’s advocate, I’m sure there are people out there who blame us and what’s happened in the last few months for that fact,” the official said.
The official said the deal would be a two-stage process, immediately opening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the US blockade, followed by negotiations on a mechanism that would allow Iran to give up parts of its nuclear program.
The official said the United States wants Iran to commit to divesting from highly enriched uranium and resolving other nuclear issues. The official said the administration believes this is a better deal than the 2015 accord reached under former President Barack Obama that allowed nuclear enrichment up to a certain level.
Officials were still working out the details of the mechanism for how to destroy the uranium with people the supreme leader had authorized to negotiate with.
The official said neither side disputed that stockpiled enriched material would be destroyed, but at this point it was a matter of how to do it. The Iranians have not backed down on a final timeline for how long the delayed enrichment will take, the official said.
“I actually think we’re in a very good place,” the official said of the deal.
“We’re in a place where we can open the straits, where we can achieve the president’s goals on nuclear material, but I actually think there are very serious ways that the narrative there could undermine a good outcome for the country,” the official added.
As a condition of the deal, the United States will lift the blockade on ships entering and leaving Iranian ports. The official said that there will be coordination between the US Central Command and the Gulf countries to ensure the safe passage of ships, but this coordination should not be understood as a pricing system. It will be a two-stage process.
Vice President J.D. Vance, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner participated in the negotiations. The official said the US is trying to involve all its allies in the Middle East.
The official said the United States “cannot force the Iranians to overthrow their own government” and that the Trump administration “will deal with the government we have in Iran right now.”
Mr Trump said on Saturday: He posted on social media a day later that the peace agreement had been “largely negotiated” but that he told his representatives “not to rush to an agreement” and that “time is on our side.”
The difference between now and the end of the first six weeks of military action is that “we’re seeing the Iranians make some serious compromises on these questions that we haven’t seen before.”
