Trump envoy says Iran must give up nuclear enrichment capabilities

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s chief Iran negotiator said on May 18 that Tehran must give up all enrichment of nuclear fuel in any deal over the fate of the country’s nuclear programme, a demand that was swiftly rejected by his Iranian counterpart in the talks.

Mr Trump’s envoy, Mr Steve Witkoff, told ABC’s This Week that

enrichment was “one very, very clear red line” for the administration,

the most direct statement yet from the White House that it would not permit Iran the capability to produce enriched uranium, even for the nuclear power plants it says it wants to build.

“We cannot have that because enrichment enables weaponisation, and we will not allow a bomb to get here,” Mr Witkoff said.

Within a few hours, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed Mr Witkoff’s demand, accusing him of trying to negotiate the deal in public and repeating Iran’s long-running argument that it will never give up its right to enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Iran is a signatory to the 1970 treaty, though the US and Israel contend it has manipulated its provisions to become a “threshold” nuclear state, enriching fuel to just below the purity needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

Mr Araghchi wrote in a social media post: “If the US is interested in ensuring that Iran will not have nuclear weapons, a deal is within reach. Enrichment in Iran, however, will continue, with or without a deal.”

Members of the administration, including Mr Trump, have for weeks been vague about whether they would agree to a deal in which Iran would be permitted any capability to produce enriched uranium – even for ostensibly commercial purposes.

In 2018, when Mr Trump pulled out of the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, he argued that the previous administration had created what he called a “disaster” by allowing Iran to retain modest enrichment capabilities. Iran subsequently ramped up its operations to produce fuel that is near weapons-grade.

Several weeks ago, Mr Witkoff suggested he might be willing to accept a deal in which Iran could enrich uranium up to 3.67 per cent – the level set in the 2015 accord, which is suitable for civilian purposes. That contributed to an internal debate in the White House, and his position has hardened since. In the interview, he told ABC News that even “1 per cent of an enrichment capability” would be too much.

In his post, Mr Araghchi said mastering enrichment had been the result of a “great sacrifice of both blood and treasure” for Iran – an apparent reference to the assassinations of top Iranian nuclear scientists by Israel – and said his team was seeing “dissonance” between what US negotiators were saying “in public and in private, and from one week to the other”.

Mr Witkoff, who is also the chief US negotiator on the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Hamas war, said in the interview that he expected to attend another negotiating session some time this week in Europe. Officials say he is expecting a response to an outline for an agreement that the US transmitted to Iran in recent days.

Notably, he did not insist in the interview that Iran destroy its main enrichment centres at Natanz and Fordow, including one being built deep under a mountain. That leaves open the possibility that the US could agree to a deal that essentially keeps Iran’s main nuclear infrastructure intact, and its nuclear centrifuges spinning – even if they are not actively enriching nuclear fuel.

With comprehensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, perhaps supplemented by US inspectors, the US and Israel would have plenty of notice if Iran were to resume enrichment.

But keeping infrastructure intact would only hamper Iran’s nuclear capabilities, not cripple them. Some officials in the Trump administration have called for a full dismantlement of Iran’s fuel-production facilities, a position that former national security adviser Mike Waltz took publicly before he was eased out of his position several weeks ago and nominated as ambassador to the United Nations.

It is unclear whether Mr Witkoff and Mr Trump can sell the President’s supporters on an agreement that stops short of dismantlement as a permanent solution to a problem Mr Trump has insisted he would solve, once and for all.

“There are all kinds of ways for us to achieve our goals,” Mr Witkoff insisted. NYTIMES