Iran nuclear deal: US President Donald Trump declares he ‘will not allow any enrichment of uranium'
US President Donald Trump on Monday said that the US will not allow any uranium enrichment as part of any deal with Iran under any deal the countries reach.
Trump made the comment in a social media post on Monday evening, without elaborating further. The US president has regularly signaled that he thinks a deal may be near, and said Iran could face military strikes otherwise.
According to a Bloomberg report, Trump last week said that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a military strike on Iran would be 'inappropriate' right now as 'we're very close to a solution'. Trump has long pledged that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
'President Trump has made it clear that Iran can never obtain a nuclear bomb," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement before Trump's post. "Special Envoy (Steve) Witkoff has sent a detailed and acceptable proposal to the Iranian regime, and it's in their best interest to accept it. Out of respect for the ongoing deal, the Administration will not comment on details of the proposal to the media.'
Trump's post comes after media reports said that Steve Witkoff's, who is leading the negotiations for the US, latest proposal to Tehran would allow Iran to retain low levels of enrichment for civilian uses like nuclear medicine and commercial power. But, this only if it agrees to shut down its heavily protected underground sites for a period of time, an AP report said.
Senior officials — including Witkoff and Trump himself — have said within the last few weeks that Iran would not be able to keep enriching uranium at any level.
The proposal, reported by Axios and confirmed by a US official, called for the creation of a regional consortium to handle uranium enrichment for civilian uses — a plan first studied more than a decade ago in negotiations that led to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Trump was sharply critical of that agreement — which also allowed set limits on uranium enrichment but permitted Iran to maintain such a capacity — and withdrew the US from it in 2017 during his first term, the AP report said.
The officials spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic negotiations.
The International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade level since its update in February, according to a confidential report released by the UN nuclear watchdog on Saturday.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, but Iranian officials have increasingly suggested that Tehran could pursue an atomic bomb.
Tehran has said it wants clear assurances of the end of sanctions in any deal. According to the AP report, the US has not yet been willing to specify how sanctions would be lifted, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said during a press conference in Tehran on Monday.
(With inputs from agencies)
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