The American side has suggested that Iran transfer its enriched uranium reserves to a third country, such as Russia. Thus, the United States continues its attempts to curtail Tehranʼs nuclear program.
This is reported by The Guardian.
According to media reports, this topic was raised during indirect talks between the two countries in the Omani capital of Muscat on April 12. The issue is considered one of the key stumbling blocks on the way to a future agreement, the material says.
Iran is expected to resist this. It insists that the stockpiles it has built up over the past four years should remain in the country under IAEA supervision. Tehran wants to “insure itself” in case a future US administration pulls out of the deal again.
President Donald Trump did so in 2018, abandoning the 2015 agreement brokered by Barack Obama. If the stockpiles are removed and Washington later violates the deal again, Iran would have to start enriching uranium from scratch, officials say.
Although most of the contacts in Muscat were indirect, the US Presidential Special Representative Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also met in person.
The next round of talks will be held in Rome on April 19, also mediated by Oman. The decision is seen as a political gesture by Trump towards Italy, The Guardian reports. The US Vice President J.D. Vance will also be in Rome that day.
Trumpʼs position on Iran
Last September, during the election campaign, Trump said he was open to a new nuclear deal with Iran. At the time, Politico noted that his statements were an attempt to ease tensions with the Iranian government — the Republican had been told a week earlier that Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump.
Trump did not go into details about future cooperation with Iran, but noted that negotiations are needed in any case — because of the threat posed by Iranʼs pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In early February, the American president signed a document that restores “maximum pressure” on Iran to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero and prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons.
And on February 6, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against an international network that diverts revenues from the sale of Iranian oil to the needs of the Iranian army, bypassing existing restrictions.
In March, Bloomberg wrote that Putin had agreed to help Trump in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
What preceded
The Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2015 by the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Germany and the EU. They agreed that the Iranian authorities would give up their nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Iran nuclear deal and imposed new sanctions against the Iranian regime.
Tehran resumed uranium production after Trump pulled out of the deal. Under Joe Biden’s presidency, Iran’s nuclear program has “advanced significantly,” Axios noted.
The Biden administration has been conducting indirect talks with Iran to revive the Iran nuclear deal. Those efforts collapsed in late 2022 when the United States accused Iran of making “unfounded” demands related to an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites. In the months that followed, the Trump administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was “off the table”.
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