President Trump’s chief Iran negotiator provided the clearest description yet of the administration’s bottom line on negotiations over the country’s nuclear program, declaring on Sunday that Tehran must give up all enrichment of nuclear fuel.
Members of the administration, including Mr. Trump himself, have for weeks been vague about whether Iran would be permitted any capability to produce uranium — even for ostensibly commercial purposes, to run the nuclear power plants Iran says it wants to build. When Mr. Trump pulled out of the last nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, he argued that the Obama administration had made a major error by allowing Iran to retain modest enrichment capabilities, which it has since used to produce fuel that is near weapons grade.
But Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that enrichment was “one very, very clear red line” for the administration.
“We cannot have that because enrichment enables weaponization, and we will not allow a bomb to get here,” he said. Even “1 percent of an enrichment capability” would be too much, he said.
Mr. Witkoff said he expected to meet Iran again, for a fourth 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.
Iran argues that it has a right to enrichment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has been in force since 1970 and has said it will never give up the right to enrich. Mr. Witkoff appears to be looking for a middle ground, and it is not clear what that compromise might be.
But notably, Mr. 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. That leaves open the possibility that Iran could claim it has a right to enrich, while not actually exercising that right.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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