Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a directive that the country’s near-weapons-grade uranium should remain in the country. The alleged demand from Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei risks enraging Donald Trump and potentially collapse peace deal talks with the US.
Israeli officials have told Reuters that Mr Trump has assured Israel that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, needed to make an atomic weapon, will be sent out of Iran and that any peace deal must include a clause on this.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will consider the war over when enriched uranium is removed from Iran, Tehran ends its support for proxy militias, and its ballistic missile capabilities are eliminated.
“The Supreme Leader’s directive, and the consensus within the establishment, is that the stockpile of enriched uranium should not leave the country,” said one of the two Iranian sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, Reuters also reported.
A fragile ceasefire is currently in place in the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. There has been no big breakthrough, however, in peace efforts. The US is blockading Iranian ports to stop Theran’s control on the Strait of Hormuz.
The US President also previously said that the month-long ceasefire between the US and Iran was on “massive life support” after dismissing Tehran’s response to a US peace proposal as “stupid”. He had called the Iranian counter to US proposals “totally unacceptable”.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump also said Iran only has a few days before agreeing on a deal, as he said he believes the regime would use a nuclear weapon against Israel if allowed to develop one. Speaking to reporters in Washington, Trump said he is giving Iran until the weekend to make a deal to end the war. A reporter asked the 79-year-old US leader: “How many days does Iran have to come to the table?”
To which Mr Trump replied: “Two or three days. Maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday. A limited period of time. Because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would start with Israel and they would blow it up, they would blow it up fast”.