Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered that Iran’s enriched uranium should not be sent abroad, reported on Thursday, as Donald Trump said the United States will not allow Tehran to keep its stockpile of highly enriched material.
Trump said the US would take the uranium if a deal required it. “We will get it. We don’t need it, we don’t want it. We’ll probably destroy it after we get it, but we’re not going to let them have it,” he said, putting the future of Iran uranium at the center of already fragile talks.
The dispute matters because Iran is believed to hold about 440kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a level still below the 90 percent needed for weapons-grade material but far closer to it than the 3.67 percent limit allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal. Nuclear experts say 60 percent is the point at which uranium becomes much quicker to enrich to weapons grade, and in theory that amount would be enough to make more than 10 nuclear warheads if refined further.
reported that Trump had assured Israel that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile would be sent out of Iran, and that any peace deal would include a clause dealing with the material. The stockpile is thought to be almost entirely in the form of hexafluoride gas, with most of it believed to be lying underground beneath the rubble of Iran’s nuclear facility.
The broader fight over the stockpile follows years of escalation. Iran signed the 2015 deal with the US to limit its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, but Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and restored sanctions. After the US pullout and the 2021 bombing of Natanz, Iran stepped up enrichment from the 3.67 percent allowed under the accord to almost 60 percent.
Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only and says it does not intend to build nuclear weapons. But the uranium stockpile has become the chief sticking point in negotiations with Washington, and Thursday’s remarks from both sides suggest neither is prepared to let it drift to the edge of the table. It is the part of the deal that could decide whether talks move forward or break apart.
