Iran will never agree to dismantle uranium centrifuges, eliminate stockpile — official
Iranian official says Tehran seeking guarantees US won’t abandon deal again; Trump says if Iran gets nuclear weapons, everyone’s ‘life will be in great danger’
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei alongside a look at centrifuge machines at the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility, Iran on April 17, 2021.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran told the United States in talks last week it was ready to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment but needed watertight guarantees US President Donald Trump would not again ditch a nuclear pact, a senior Iranian official said on Friday. He also vowed that Iran would never agree to dismantle its centrifuges for enriching uranium.
Iran and the United States are set to hold a second round of talks on Saturday in Rome, a week after a first round of negotiations in Oman, which both sides described as positive.
Trump, meanwhile, reiterated Friday that he would not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.
“With Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. And if they have a nuclear weapon, you’ll all be very unhappy. You’ll all be very unhappy because your life will be in great danger,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office before his event was drawn to an abrupt close when someone in the room had a medical issue.
Trump, who has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
In the intervening years, Tehran has steadily overstepped the 2015 agreement’s limits on its nuclear program, designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb.
Iran, whose leaders are sworn to destroy Israel, says it does not seek nuclear weapons, but enriches uranium to a level far beyond what is necessary for a civilian nuclear program and a short step away from weapons-grade. On Thursday, while visiting Tehran, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi warned that the US and Iran “don’t have much time” to ink a deal.
Former US President Joe Biden, whose administration unsuccessfully tried to reinstate the 2015 pact, was not able to meet Tehran’s demand for guarantees that no future US administration would renege on it.
While both Tehran and Washington have said they are set on pursuing diplomacy, they remain far apart on a dispute that has rumbled on for more than two decades.
Tehran’s red lines “mandated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei” could not be compromised in the talks, the official told Reuters, describing Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity.
He said those red lines meant Iran would never agree to dismantle its centrifuges for enriching uranium, halt enrichment altogether, or reduce the amount of enriched uranium it stores to a level below the level it agreed in the 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.
It would also not negotiate over its missile program, which Tehran views as outside the scope of any nuclear deal.
“Iran understood in indirect talks in Oman that Washington doesn’t want Iran to stop all nuclear activities, and this can be a common ground for Iran and the US to start a fair negotiation,” the source said.
Top US negotiator Steve Witkoff, since overseeing the first round of negotiations last Saturday, has publicly set out contradictory positions, first appearing to indicate the US would seek to limit rather than destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and then hardening his stance the next day to say to say any deal would require Iran to stop enrichment altogether.
Tehran has said that it is ready to work with the UN nuclear agency, which it sees as “the only acceptable body in this process,” to provide assurances that its nuclear work is peaceful, according to the source.
According to dissident Iranian news outlet Iran International, citing three diplomatic sources, Tehran proposed during last week’s talks a three-stage deal that would cap its uranium enrichment to the same levels agreed to in the abandoned 2015 deal in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions.
Witkoff was said to have surprised the Iranian delegation by welcoming the offer.
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