A senior Iranian official said on Sunday that his government is prepared to offer concessions on its uranium enrichment program, in an effort to hold off possible strikes from the United States – but only if the U.S. agrees to meet Iran’s demands and lift all economic sanctions.
The maximalist demands presented to Reuters on Sunday by the unnamed Iranian official were not much different than Iran’s position ever since President Donald Trump withdrew from his predecessor Barack Obama’s nuclear deal in 2018.
For that matter, Iran constantly complained that even Obama’s nuclear deal – with its infamous “pallets of cash” secretly delivered to the world’s worst state sponsors of terrorism – did not furnish Tehran with the economic benefits it was expecting.
Much of the Iranian cheating and intransigence that led Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA (as the nuclear deal is formally known) was justified in Tehran’s eyes because they expected Obama and the Europeans to give Iran more benefits, in exchange for slightly reducing the speed of Iran’s march to nuclear weapons.
The “fresh concessions” offered by the official who spoke to Reuters included “a combination of sending half of its most highly enriched uranium abroad, diluting the rest and taking part in creating a regional enrichment consortium.”
Iran would also reportedly offer “openings for U.S. companies to participate as contractors in Iran’s large oil and gas industries,” a proposal that builds on previous comments from Iranian officials that the JCPOA fell apart because it did not include enough benefits for the United States.
In exchange, the U.S. would have to recognize Iran’s right to “peaceful nuclear enrichment” and lift all economic sanctions.
“The last round of talks showed that U.S. ideas regarding the scope and mechanism of sanctions relief differ from Iran’s demands. Both sides need to reach a logical timetable for lifting sanctions. This roadmap must be reasonable and based on mutual interests,” the official said.
The next round of indirect talks between the United States and Iran is scheduled for Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland, where the previous round took place. The general sense among diplomatic sources is that the U.S. and Iran appear to be on a collision course, and a conflict might even break out before Thursday.
President Trump’s envoy to the talks, Steve Witkoff, told Fox News on Sunday that the president was a bit “frustrated” and “curious” that Iran has not “capitulated” by offering serious concessions on its nuclear program yet, although Witkoff added that the terms “frustrated” and “capitulated” might be a little too strong for the situation he wanted to convey.
“Why, under this sort of pressure, with the amount of sea power and naval power that we have over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess that we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do?’” Witkoff wondered.
Witkoff also warned on Sunday that Iran could be “a week away” from refining its highly-enriched uranium to “industrial-grade bomb-making material,” and “we can’t have that.”