An adviser to Iranʼs supreme leader Ali Shamkhani said Tehran is ready for a new nuclear deal with the United States in exchange for the United States lifting economic sanctions. The comments were the clearest public indication yet that Iran is ready to make a deal, coming from a close confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on national security matters.
Shamkhani spoke about these conditions in an interview with NBC News.
According to him, in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions, Iran will commit to never building nuclear weapons and to getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium suitable for building them. The country will also be obliged to enrich uranium only to the level needed for civilian use. Iran agrees to have this monitored by international inspectors.
"Itʼs still possible. If the Americans act as they say, then we can definitely have better relations," Shamkhani said.
Shamkhani gave an interview to NBC News just hours after Trump offered Iran a deal, while threatening tough economic sanctions if Tehran did not agree to limit its nuclear program.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded to these statements. Speaking live on state television, he said: "He thinks he can come, shout slogans and intimidate us. But it is better for us to die as martyrs than in bed. We will not be intimidated, we will not obey any hooligan."
Shamkhani also criticized Trumpʼs aggressive tone and constant threats: "He talks about the olive branch of peace, but we havenʼt seen it — itʼs all made of barbed wire."
Back in April, Reuters, citing a senior Iranian official, wrote that Iran was ready to agree to some US demands regarding the nuclear deal, but demanded guarantees that Trump would not withdraw from it. At that time, it was also said that Tehranʼs red lines, "defined by the authorized representatives of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei", should not be violated.
According to him, these red lines mean that Iran will never agree to dismantle its uranium enrichment centrifuges, completely stop enrichment, or reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium below the level specified in the 2015 agreement, from which Trump later withdrew.
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 on the Iranian regime. Tehran resumed uranium production after Trump pulled out of the deal. During Joe Bidenʼs presidency, Iranʼs nuclear program, as Axios noted, "advanced significantly".
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”.
Last September, during the election campaign, Trump said he was open to a new nuclear deal with Iran. Trump noted that negotiations were needed in any case because of the threat posed by Iranʼs pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In early February, the US president signed a document that renews “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 on an international network that diverts revenues from the sale of Iranian oil to the needs of the Iranian military, bypassing existing restrictions. Since then, there have been several rounds of negotiations between the countries.
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