CNN —
US envoy Steve Witkoff has said that moving forward, talks with Iran would be about verification of its nuclear program, stopping short of calling for Tehran to dismantle it altogether.
“The conversation with the Iranians will be much about two critical points,” Witkoff told Fox News on Monday. The first is verification of uranium enrichment, “and ultimately verification on weaponization, that includes missiles, type of missiles that they have stockpiled there, and it includes the trigger for a bomb.”
Witkoff did not mention a demand to fully dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, as other US officials have, saying only that Iran does not need to enrich uranium past 3.67 percent to run a civilian program.
Other officials have been more hawkish on what the US expects from Iran. On Sunday, a day after Witkoff started talks with Iranian negotiators in Oman, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Tehran to fully dismantle its nuclear program.
“Iran, come to the table, negotiate, full dismantlement of your nuclear capabilities,” he said on Fox News, echoing earlier remarks by US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, who told CBS last month that US President Donald Trump would demand a “full dismantlement.”
Iranian officials have dismissed that proposal as a non-starter, accusing the US of using it as a pretext to weaken and ultimately topple the Islamic Republic. Tehran is entitled to a civilian nuclear energy program under a UN treaty.
The UN nuclear watchdog has however warned that Iran has been accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, closer to the roughly 90% level that is weapons grade.
Uranium is a powerful fuel used in nuclear energy and weapons. When enriched, it can be used either to generate electricity or make bombs, depending on how much it is enriched.
On Friday, semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that Iran had set strict terms ahead of the talks with the US, saying that “red lines” include “threatening language” by the Trump administration and “excessive demands regarding Iran’s nuclear program.” The US must also refrain from raising issues relating to Iran’s defense industry, Tasnim said, likely referring Iran’s ballistic missile program, which the US’ Middle Eastern allies see as a threat to their security.
Witkoff began talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday, which both sides described as positive. The next round of talks will take place on April 19, and a person familiar with the planning told CNN they will likely be in Rome, but the plan isn’t fully nailed down.
It is unclear how the deal Trump envisions would differ from the one brokered by the Obama administration in 2015, which Trump withdrew from three years later. Trump has vowed to strike a “stronger” agreement this time around.
In his first comments on the issue since Iranian and American negotiators met over the weekend, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday against repeating the “mistake we made” in the last negotiations with the US. He said Iranians should not “tie the country’s issues to these talks.”
“A deal may come to fruition, or it may not,” he said.
Israel has been among the loudest advocates for Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear program.
Speaking alongside Trump at the Oval Office last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touted a Libya-style nuclear deal between the US and Iran, which in 2003 dismantled the North African nation’s nuclear program in the hopes of ushering in a new era of relations with the US after its two-decade oil embargo on Muammar Qaddafi’s regime.
After relinquishing its nuclear program, Libya descended into civil war following a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Qaddafi’s regime and led to his killing. Iranian officials have long warned that a similar deal would be rejected from the outset.
