U.S. Offers Iran Civilian Nuclear Program in Possible Compromise With Tehran
Negotiators to meet Saturday in Oman for technical talks on nuclear deal
The Trump administration is prepared to allow Iran to have a civil nuclear program that relies exclusively on imported nuclear fuel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, outlining a possible compromise with Tehran aimed at preventing it from building a nuclear weapon.
Rubio’s comments, which came in a podcast earlier this week with The Free Press, provides a window into the details of the Trump administration’s stance since closed-door nuclear talks with Tehran started earlier this month.
Permitting Iran to have a program for power generation and other civilian purposes steps back from the initial demand last month by national security adviser Mike Waltz that Tehran agree to the “full dismantlement” of its nuclear program.
“If Iran wants a civil nuclear program, they can have one just like many other countries in the world,” Rubio said. But he added, Tehran would be required to “import enriched material.”
As outlined by Rubio, Iran could keep operating nuclear reactors, but its pathway to a bomb would be blocked, in part, because it wouldn’t be allowed to enrich its own uranium.
On Saturday, technical experts from the two sides will meet for the first time since the Trump administration and Iranians began high-level talks earlier this month.
The U.S. proposal, most experts say, is likely to be a hard sell. While it would provide Iran with what Tehran says it wants—a civilian nuclear program—accepting the proposal would make Iran dependent on foreign sources of fuel. Rejecting the proposal would deepen concerns in the West that Tehran is seeking to preserve the option to develop nuclear weapons.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out what he called the “U.A.E.” model as the talks got under way in Rome last week. That was a reference to the approach taken by the United Arab Emirates, which imports its nuclear fuel to operate several reactors, instead of enriching uranium itself. The oil-rich Persian Gulf state has also promised not to reprocess the spent fuel to extract plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
The idea of providing Iran with fuel goes back to the early days of Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran offered to accept non-Iranian nuclear enrichment in the 1980s and early 1990s if the U.S. would allow European countries to provide the fuel but Washington refused, according to Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian official now a nuclear policy expert at Princeton University.
Richard Nephew, who has served as a negotiator with Iran during the Obama and Biden administrations, said that the idea resurfaced during the talks leading to a 2015 nuclear deal restricting Iran’s nuclear program. Iran suggested that its uranium enrichment facilities could provide fissile material for neighboring countries but refused to depend on fuel from abroad, he said.
“People have been talking about joint ventures and multinational fuel supply for decades now. The problem always comes back to Iran’s distrust that they’ll get fuel and everyone else’s refusal to agree to Iran hosting such production sites,” Nephew said.
More recently, the idea of having Iran import fuel was hinted at by Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy and real-estate executive who is leading the talks with Iran. In comments last week, Witkoff insisted that Iran eliminate its “nuclear enrichment and weaponization program,” leaving open the possibility some peaceful nuclear activities might continue.
Elaborating on Witkoff’s comments, Rubio said that Iran could have a peaceful civil nuclear program as long as the uranium was imported from outside the country and was enriched at the low level of 3.67%.
Witkoff is “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, like multiple countries around the world do for their peaceful civil nuclear programs,” Rubio said.
After President Trump during his first term exited the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran stepped up its nuclear program and is now producing 60% high-enriched uranium, the only country without nuclear weapons to do so. That material can be swiftly converted into the 90%-grade material needed for a bomb.
Iran already possesses enough nuclear material for at least six weapons, though U.S. intelligence says that Khamenei hasn’t given the go-ahead to build a nuclear device.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program, told reporters on Wednesday there are no indications that Tehran has slowed the pace of its nuclear operations since talks with the Trump administration began.
Grossi, who visited Iran last week, said that Tehran has agreed to let an IAEA technical team travel to the country in coming days to discuss replacing equipment that Iran had removed. Iran agreed to the visit after being criticized for not cooperating with the watchdog agency. While the meetings aren’t linked to the U.S. talks, Grossi said it was a sign that Iran might be open to a deal.
Gary Samore, the director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and a former White House official during the Obama administration, said it was extremely unlikely that Iran would give up its enrichment program. Such a refusal, he said, would confront the Trump administration with a choice between accepting a limited Iranian enrichment program under strict verification or considering military action that Trump has threatened if Tehran balks at a deal.
Iran’s deputy foreign ministers, Majid Takht-Ravanchi and Kazem Gharibabadi, will head the Iranian delegation to the Saturday technical talks, which will be held in Oman. The U.S. hasn’t announced the members of its team. Another round of high-level negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Witkoff are expected to follow at some point.