Iran urges assurances on U.S. commitment to new nuclear pact

Iran and the US are set to hold a second round of talks in Rome on Saturday.
The talks are expected to be a continuation of a positive first round in Oman.
President Trump has been restoring a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February.

DUBAI: In talks last week, Iran told the United States that it was ready to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment but needed watertight guarantees that President Donald Trump would not abandon the nuclear pact again, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.

Iran and the United States will hold a second round of talks on Saturday in Rome, following a positive first round of negotiations in Oman a week earlier.

Since February, Trump has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran. In 2018, during his first term, he abandoned the 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

In the intervening years, Tehran has steadily exceeded the 2015 agreement’s limits on its nuclear programme, which were designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration unsuccessfully tried to reinstate the 2015 pact, could not meet Tehran’s demand for guarantees that no future U.S. administration would renege on it.

Tehran has approached the talks warily, skeptical that they could yield a deal and suspicious of Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran if it does not halt its accelerating uranium enrichment program, which Iran claims is peaceful.

While both Tehran and Washington have expressed their commitment to pursuing diplomacy, they remain far apart on a dispute that has persisted for more than two decades. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Tehran’s red lines, “mandated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” could not be compromised in the talks.

He said that those red lines meant Iran would never agree to dismantle its centrifuges for enriching uranium, halt enrichment altogether, or reduce the amount of enriched uranium it stores below the level agreed upon in the 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.

It would also not negotiate over its missile program, which Tehran views as outside the scope of any nuclear deal.

“Iran understood in indirect talks in Oman that Washington doesn’t want Iran to stop all nuclear activities, and this can be a common ground for Iran and the U.S. to start a fair negotiation,” the source said.

Iran said on Friday that reaching a deal with the United States is possible if “they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands.”

Top U.S. negotiator Steve Witkoff, in a post on X on Tuesday, stated that Iran must “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment” to reach a deal with Washington.

According to the source, Tehran has stated that it is ready to work with the U.N. nuclear agency, which it considers “the only acceptable body in this process,” to provide assurances that its nuclear work is peaceful.

The source said Araqchi told the Americans that Washington should promptly lift sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors in exchange for that cooperation.