(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) The 14-point US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, which US officials detailed to reporters on Wednesday, says that under the potential deal, Iran’s enriched uranium will be downblended “on site,” as the US has backed off on its demand to take it out of the country.
The MoU states that the “have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph seven with the minimum methodology to be down-blending on site under the supervision of the [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
Iran had offered to downblend its uranium enriched at the 60% level before the US launched the war, something Oman’s foreign minister, who was mediating US-Iran negotiations, told US media the day before the first US-Israeli strikes hit Iran.
“There is agreement now that this will be downblended to the lowest level possible. And converted into fuel and that fuel will be irreversible. … I think we have agreement on that in my view,” Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi said on “Face the Nation” on February 27, 2026.
Despite the offer being on the table before the war, Trump administration officials are selling the downblending as a “major win,” as the deal is under intense scrutiny from hawks in the US and Israel. “They’re saying: ‘We will destroy the enriched stockpile, and this is how we’re going to do it, at a minimum,” a US official told reporters on Wednesday.
President Trump also signaled he was backing off on his demand for the US to obtain the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried deep under rubble at nuclear facilities the US bombed in June 2025. “You could make the case, why even bother? It’s not very valuable stuff.” Trump said at the G7 summit on Tuesday.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
