(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview released on Wednesday that Iran cannot enrich uranium under any deal with the US, an idea Tehran has said is “unacceptable.”
Rubio said that Iran could maintain a civilian nuclear program but that it would have to import enriched uranium to use as fuel. “If Iran wants a civil nuclear program, they can have one just like many other countries in the world have one, and that is they import enriched material,” he said on the podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss.
Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said Iran’s right to enrich uranium was non-negotiable. In response to Rubio’s comments, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that “zero enrichment is unacceptable.”
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy, who has been leading the negotiations with Iran, previously suggested the US would be happy with a deal that would cap Iran’s nuclear enrichment at 3.67%, the same limit set by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. But after backlash from Iran hawks, Witkoff walked back the comments, saying Iran must end its enrichment program.
Rubio said that when Witkoff mentioned the 3.67% limit, he was “talking about the level of enrichment that they would be allowed, the level of enriched material that they would be allowed to import from outside.”
While Trump administration officials are making maximalist demands publicly, diplomacy between the US and Iran continues to advance, suggesting the US is not actually demanding zero enrichment in the talks.
“Rubio once again indicates that zero-enrichment is the US objective. So far, however, this has not been the US position inside the talks,” Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, said in a post on X.
“Rubio is either saying this to play bad cop (with Trump’s blessing) to keep that option open, or he is seeking to sabotage the talks,” Parsi added.
Witkoff and Aragchi are set to hold another round of negotiations in Oman this Saturday. At the same time, a meeting will be held at the expert level to discuss technical details of a potential deal.
President Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if a deal isn’t reached, even though his intelligence agencies recently reaffirmed that there’s no evidence that Tehran is building a nuclear bomb or that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reversed his 2003 fatwah that banned the production of weapons of mass destruction.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
