Four rounds of talks with a team of American diplomats have done nothing to soften Iran’s position on ending its illicit nuclear weapons development, Iranian officials insisted on Thursday.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has led the delegation to Oman-mediated talks with Washington for the past month, eliminated the possibility on Thursday that Iran will stop enriching uranium, a core demand of the administration of President Donald Trump for any agreement to lift sanctions on the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism. Tehran insists that it has a “right” to generate highly-enriched uranium as part of its “peaceful” nuclear program, while American officials have pointed out that no peaceful nuclear states have programs that enrich to the capacity that Iran has and that uranium of such highly enriched quality is not necessary to run nuclear power plants — its only use would be in developing a bomb.
Nonetheless, Araghchi insisted, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV, that enrichment is a “right of the Iranian people” that the Islamist regime will not compromise on.
“Defending the rights of the Iranian people in the nuclear field, including [uranium] enrichment, is one of these principles and rights of the people that we will not compromise on,” the foreign minister declared, “neither in the media nor at the negotiation table. This is the right of the Iranian people, and no one can deny it.”
Araghchi made similar remarks last week before the latest round of negotiations with the U.S., led by Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff.
“Enrichment is one of the major achievements and a source of national pride. It has come at a high cost — including the lives of our nuclear scientists. It is absolutely non-negotiable,” he stated.
“From our point of view, enrichment must continue. There’s absolutely no room for compromise on that,” Araghchi reiterated. “While we may agree to some temporary limits — on levels, quantities, or scale — for the sake of building trust, but the fundamental right to enrichment is non-negotiable.”
The emphasis on not abandoning enrichment appeared to be a response to comments Witkoff made in an interview with Breitbart News prior to the Sunday talks in which he stated the Trump administration would not accept at deal that did not end enrichment.
“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line,” Witkoff told Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle. “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.”
Witkoff added that the Trump administration would never accept an agreement “where sanctions come off and there’s no sunsetting of their obligations. That doesn’t make sense.” He alluded to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the failed nuclear deal brokered by former President Barack Obama.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has similarly made comments listing the end of uranium enrichment as a requirement for lifting sanctions.
“They have to walk away from sponsoring terrorists, they have to walk away from helping the Houthis,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted in early May, “they have to walk away from building long-range missiles that have no purpose to exist other than having nuclear weapons, and they have to walk away from enrichment.”
Iranian officials have described the lifting of onerous sanctions on the country as the primary objective of engaging in talks with America. While neither side has offered many specifics on the nature of the talks so far, the last round resulted in Trump imposing more sanctions on Iran, rather than lifting them. The new round of sanctions the Department of the Treasury announced on Tuesday targets a collective of companies and shell corporations accused of masking the origin of Iranian oil by surreptitiously transferring it from ship to ship and generating fraudulent documentation changing its origin. The Treasury accused the companies involved of shipping the oil to “teapot refineries” in China. The State Department also announced another set of sanctions the day before that State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce explained targeted the Iranian oil industry. Tehran’s illicit sales to avoid sanctions, Bruce explained, help fund “the development of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), nuclear proliferation, and Iran’s terrorist proxies, including the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea Shipping, the U.S. Navy, and Israel.”
President Trump himself had harsh words for Iran in remarks on Tuesday during his tour of the Middle East, which made stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“I want to make a deal with Iran, I want to do something if it’s possible, but for that to happen it must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Trump demanded. “They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Iranian officials claimed on the same day that they were open to “temporary” limits on uranium enrichment, as proposed in the JCPOA, but the White House has signaled that such an agreement would not be acceptable.
