U.S. negotiating position on Iran in flux as talks continue

As technical meetings begin in Oman this weekend, the Trump administration has yet to determine its acceptable bottom line for an Iran nuclear deal.

By Karen DeYoung

A technical team of U.S. officials will meet with Iranian counterparts Saturday in Oman, the next step in the Trump administration’s negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

The U.S. team of about a dozen representatives from various departments, including State and Treasury as well as the intelligence community, gathered at the State Department for the first time this week to discuss the still-undetermined parameters of administration demands on Iran, which await a decision by President Donald Trump.

“I think we’re doing very well with respect to Iran,” Trump said Thursday. “We’re having very serious meetings, and there are only two options. And one option is not a good option. It’s not a not a good option at all.” He has threatened military action against Iran if an agreement is not reached.

Trump has repeatedly said that his red line is that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But beneath that threshold is a wide range of options to reduce or eliminate an Iranian nuclear program that has now produced and stockpiled a considerable quantity of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.

Although State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters Thursday that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff would also travel to Oman on Saturday for a separate, third meeting this month with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, other U.S. officials said Witkoff’s plans were not yet determined. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policymaking.

In their initial planning meeting, members of the technical team raised questions about several aspects of the U.S. position, including seemingly contradictory statements by administration officials on whether Iran should be allowed any enrichment capability at all.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week offered a new response to that question, saying that Iran could use a specified amount of low-level enriched uranium in peaceful civil nuclear programs, but it would have to be imported from abroad. Under a 2015 agreement that Trump withdrew from in 2018, Iran was permitted to enrich low-level uranium for energy and medical purposes.

“There’s a pathway to a civil, peaceful nuclear program if they want one,” Rubio said in an interview with the Free Press. “But if they insist on enriching, then they will be the only country in the world that doesn’t have a ‘weapons program,’ quote-unquote, but is enriching. And so I think that’s problematic.”

There are actually a number of countries with enrichment but no weapons programs, including Japan, Brazil and Argentina, along with the Netherlands and Germany as part of a European consortium.

The 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear cooperation, does not prohibit enrichment. Iran, a signatory, “must not be treated as an exception within the global nonproliferation framework,” Araghchi said in a speech published this week.

“As a signatory of the NPT, Iran is entitled to the same rights and bound by the same obligations as any other member,” he said. Iran has said it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, even as the United States and others have noted that weapons production is the only use for the quantity and purity of the highly enriched uranium it is now stockpiling.

Iran has also insisted that the negotiations be limited to nuclear matters and exclude discussions of its conventional weapons development and support for proxy militias such as Yemen’s Houthis, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. It is seeking the removal of U.S. and international economic sanctions in exchange for what Araghchi called “robust monitoring and verification” of its nuclear program.

The U.S. technical team that will travel to Oman this weekend is headed by Michael Anton, director of the State Department’s policy planning office. A MAGA stalwart who served in Trump’s first administration, Anton has no known expertise in nuclear matters.

Asked why Anton was chosen for the role, Bruce said only that “he’s there because he should be there.”

John Hudson contributed to this report.

By Karen DeYoung

Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community. follow on X@karendeyoung1