US special envoy Steve Witkoff warned that if Sunday’s talks with Iran are not productive, “then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route.”
In an interview with Breitbart posted Friday, Witkoff said the US opted against holding another round of talks last week “because we needed to get to certain understandings with” Iran in order for discussions to be useful.
“Hopefully this Sunday they will be productive. Hopefully that means they will continue those talks,” he said.
The talks in Oman on Sunday will only be high-level, suggesting that the two sides would discuss a broader framework for moving forward. A source familiar told CNN that the technical team, which negotiates on more granular aspects of a deal like sanctions relief, is not expected to attend.
“It was appropriate to have the next round of talks at the principals level,” the source said.
Another source familiar said the discussions are expected to be both direct and indirect.
In the interview with Breitbart, Witkoff described the US expectations for the talks in some of the greatest detail to date.
“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—those are their three enrichment facilities—have to be dismantled,” he said.
Iran has said it must be allowed to enrich uranium, that it’s non-negotiable.
“Iran has every right to possess the full nuclear fuel cycle,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is expected to meet Witkoff on Sunday, wrote on X a week ago.
Similar to the negotiations with Russia, where the US has floated incentives to end the war in Ukraine, Witkoff hinted at similar incentives with Tehran.
“We’re inviting Iran to be a member of the league of nations,” he said. “We’re saying to Iran: ‘You can be a better nation. We can do business with you. We can have strategic relationships with you. But you can’t be a provocateur.’”
Witkoff said Iran has told the US it does not want a nuclear weapon – a position Tehran has long maintained.
The special envoy said that the talks are focused exclusively on the nuclear issue, a change from the attempts of the first Trump administration to deal widely with Iran’s aggressive actions in the region.
“Do we think they need to stop enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and pulling back from being a provocateur? We do believe that. That’s a secondary discussion,” he said. “Do we think that they should not be supplying weapons to people we consider to be our enemies? We believe that. But again, we don’t want to confuse the nuclear discussion because that to us is the existential issue. That’s the issue that needs to be solved today and quickly.”
CNN’s Alex Marquardt contributed to this story.
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