Trump envoy says Iran must give up nuclear enrichment capability

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

Trump’s envoy, 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 weaponization, and we will not allow a bomb to get here,” Witkoff said.

Within a few hours, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed 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 Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran is a signatory to the 1970 treaty, though the U.S. 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.

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

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

In his post, 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 U.S. negotiators were saying “in public and in private, and from one week to the other.”

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

Notably, Witkoff did not insist in the interview that Iran destroy its main enrichment centers at Natanz and Fordow, including one being built deep under a mountain.

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