The United States has sent Iran a proposal for a nuclear agreement between Tehran and Washington, the White House confirmed on Saturday.
The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, said that he had received “elements of an American agreement” by his Omani counterpart Badr Albusaidi during a short visit to the Iranian capital.
It comes after A report by the UN nuclear guard dog said Iran had further intensified its enriched uranium production, a key element in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
The white house press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Saturday that it was in the “best interest of Tehran to accept” the agreement, adding: “President Trump clearly said that Iran can never get a nuclear bomb”.
Leavitt said that a “detailed and acceptable” proposal had been sent to Iran by US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
The American proposal “will rightly be reacted in accordance with the principles, national interests and the rights of the Iranian people,” wrote Araghchi on X.
The precise details of the agreement are not yet clear.
The proposal follows a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), – seen by the BBC – which found that Iran now has more than 400 kg of uranium enriched at 60% of purity – near the 90% purity required for armed quality uranium.
This is well above the sufficient purity level for civil nuclear energy and research.
It only takes approximately 10 nuclear weapons if it is refined, making Iran the only non -nuclear state producing uranium at this level.
Iran has long declared that its program was peaceful.
The United States has long sought to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity. The talks between the two powers mediated by Oman have been underway since April.
The two parties expressed optimism during talks, but remain divided on key questions – the chief among them, if Iran can continue to enrich any future agreement.
Despite the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington, the IEA report gave no indication that Iran has slowed down its nuclear enrichment efforts.
Iran has produced highly enriched uranium at a rate equivalent to approximately one nuclear weapon per month in the last three months, the AIAA report revealed.
US officials believe that if Iran chooses to make a weapon, it could produce weapon quality equipment in less than two weeks and potentially build a bomb in a few months.
Iran has long denied that it is trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, the IAEA said that he could not confirm if this was still the case because Iran refuses to grant access to higher inspectors and has not answered longtime questions on its nuclear history.
Trump is looking for a new nuclear agreement with Tehran after having removed the United States from a previous nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers in 2018.
This nuclear agreement, known as the Complete Complete Action Plan or JCPOA, was signed in 2015 by Iran and the United States, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The JCPOA sought to limit and monitor the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions that had been placed on the regime in 2010 on suspicions that its nuclear program was used to develop a bomb.
But Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement during his first mandate, saying that JCPOA was a “bad deal” because it was not permanent and did not address the Iran’s ballistic missile program, among others.
Trump then reprinted American sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign to force Iran to negotiate a new extended agreement.
In the years that followed, Tehran has regularly exceeded the limits of the 2015 Agreement on its nuclear program, designed to make the development of an atomic bomb.
Trump previously threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations if diplomacy fails to conclude an agreement.
