Latest news with #UraniumEnrichment
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump administration exploring $30 billion civilian nuclear deal for Iran
The Trump administration in recent days has explored possible economic incentives for Iran in return for the regime halting uranium enrichment, including releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, according to three sources familiar with the discussions. The tentative proposal would also allow Iran to receive assistance from regional countries to enable Tehran to build a civilian nuclear program, granting Tehran access to as much as $30 billion. Follow live politics coverage here The proposal is one of many ideas under consideration by the administration, the sources said. The details of the administration's discussions were first reported by CNN. The potential deal would mark a major reversal in policy for President Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 arguing in part that the sanctions relief and unfreezing of Iranian assets had provided a 'lifeline of cash' to the Iranian regime to continue its malign activities. Still, it is not immediately clear if the financial proposal or any negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will move forward. In a Truth Social post Friday night, Trump said he "never heard of this ridiculous idea," adding that it was "just another HOAX put out by the Fake News." Earlier Friday, Trump threatened to drop any possible sanctions relief for Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared victory in the war against Israel and downplayed the significance of U.S. attacks on their nuclear sites. 'Why would the so-called 'Supreme Leader,' Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of the war torn Country of Iran, say so blatantly and foolishly that he won the War with Israel, when he knows his statement is a lie?' Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social, adding. 'During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions, and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast, and complete recovery — The sanctions are BITING! But no, instead I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust.' In a pre-recorded speech on Iranian state TV on Thursday, Khamenei said: 'The Islamic Republic was victorious and, in retaliation, delivered a hand slap to America's face.' He added: 'This action can be repeated in the future.' But later on Friday, Trump insisted the Iranians still wanted to meet with him to discuss possible sanctions relief. 'They do want to meet me, and we'll do that quickly. We're going to do it quickly,' Trump told reporters during a White House meeting with the foreign ministers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda. 'Don't you think we have sanctions on there that they can't do anything? Wouldn't you think that they want to meet me? I mean, they're not stupid people.' This article was originally published on
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump denies US plan to offer Iran $30bn civilian nuclear deal
Donald Trump strongly rejected media reports that the US considered giving Iran up to $30bn to develop a civilian nuclear energy programme in exchange for halting uranium enrichment. The reports, published by CNN and NBC News this week, cited unnamed officials who claimed discussions had taken place within the Trump administration about a possible deal involving the release of billions in frozen Iranian assets and regional cooperation to support its non-military nuclear development. 'These proposals were preliminary and under consideration,' CNN reported, quoting officials familiar with the discussions. NBC said such ideas marked a dramatic policy shift from Mr Trump's previous position which had seen him abandon during his first term a nuclear agreement with Iran, claiming it provided Tehran with 'a lifeline of cash'. The idea, if pursued, would represent a significant diplomatic opening during a period of heightened tensions in the Middle East. Tehran and Washington were engaged in talks on Iran's nuclear programme until Israel launched a surprise attack on the Islamic Republic earlier this month. The US quickly joined the conflict on Israel's side, bombing three Iranian nuclear sites last weekend. Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists its programme is peaceful. The US maintains its objective is to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Mr Trump furiously denied the reports late on Friday. 'Who in the Fake News Media is the Sleazebag saying that 'President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.' Never heard of this ridiculous idea,' he said on his social media platform, Truth Social. 'Just another HOAX put out by the Fake News.' The denial came just days after Mr Trump declared a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, following a deadly regional conflict that began on 13 June when Israeli forces attacked Iran. The conflict had stoked fears of instability across the Middle East, already volatile due to Israel's ongoing war in Gaza since October 2023. After the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran retaliated by hitting an American base in Qatar on Monday. Iran's health ministry reported 627 civilian deaths from Israeli attacks while Israel claimed 28 fatalities from Iranian strikes. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, lashed out at Mr Trump on Saturday for what he described as his 'disrespectful and unacceptable' remarks. The rebuke came after Mr Trump claimed credit for saving supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from an 'ugly and ignominious death'. Mr Araghchi warned that if Mr Trump 'is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful tone and stop hurting millions of heartfelt supporters' of Khamenei. 'The Great and Powerful Iranian People, who showed the world that the Israeli regime had NO CHOICE but to RUN to 'Daddy' to avoid being flattened by our Missiles, do not take kindly to Threats and Insults,' Mr Araghchi added in a post. His comments came ahead of a state funeral in Tehran for about 60 people, including top military commanders, killed in the conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, in a separate Truth Social post, Mr Trump, appeared to link the diplomatic rift to Iran's rhetoric. 'During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions…But no, instead I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust,' he said, referring to Mr Khamenei's declaration of victory in the conflict with Israel. 'The sanctions are BITING!' Israel, widely believed to be the only country in the region with nuclear weapons, said it launched its war against Iran to keep it from acquiring similar capabilities. Unlike Iran, Israel is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The UN watchdog has stated it has 'no credible indication' that Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump dismisses reports US is weighing up to $30 billion civilian nuclear deal for Iran
By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed media reports that said his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program. CNN reported on Thursday and NBC News reported on Friday that the Trump administration in recent days had explored possible economic incentives for Iran in return for its government halting uranium enrichment. The reports cited sources. CNN cited officials as saying that several proposals were floated and were preliminary. "Who in the Fake News Media is the SleazeBag saying that 'President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.' Never heard of this ridiculous idea," Trump wrote on Truth Social late on Friday, calling the reports a "HOAX." Since April, Iran and the U.S. have held indirect talks aimed at finding a new diplomatic solution regarding Iran's nuclear program. Tehran says its program is peaceful and Washington says it wants to ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon. Trump, earlier this week, announced a ceasefire between U.S. ally Israel and its regional rival Iran to halt a war that began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran. The Israel-Iran conflict had raised alarms in a region already on edge since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023. The U.S. struck Iran's nuclear sites over the last weekend and Iran targeted a U.S. base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation, before Trump announced the ceasefire. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons and said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has "no credible indication" of an active, coordinated weapons programme in Iran.
Reuters
a day ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Trump dismisses reports US is weighing up to $30 bln civilian nuclear deal for Iran
WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed media reports that said his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program. CNN reported on Thursday and NBC News reported on Friday that the Trump administration in recent days had explored possible economic incentives for Iran in return for its government halting uranium enrichment. The reports cited sources. CNN cited officials as saying that several proposals were floated and were preliminary. "Who in the Fake News Media is the SleazeBag saying that 'President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.' Never heard of this ridiculous idea," Trump wrote on Truth Social late on Friday, calling the reports a "HOAX." Since April, Iran and the U.S. have held indirect talks aimed at finding a new diplomatic solution regarding Iran's nuclear program. Tehran says its program is peaceful and Washington says it wants to ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon. Trump, earlier this week, announced a ceasefire between U.S. ally Israel and its regional rival Iran to halt a war that began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran. The Israel-Iran conflict had raised alarms in a region already on edge since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023. The U.S. struck Iran's nuclear sites over the last weekend and Iran targeted a U.S. base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation, before Trump announced the ceasefire. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons and said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has "no credible indication" of an active, coordinated weapons programme in Iran.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What's next for Iran's nuclear programme?
Barely 72 hours after United States President Donald Trump's air strikes against Iran, a controversy erupted over the extent of the damage they had done to the country's uranium enrichment facilities in Fordow and Natanz. The New York Times and CNN leaked a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that the damage may have been 'from moderate to severe', noting it had 'low confidence' in the findings because they were an early assessment. Trump had claimed the sites were 'obliterated'. The difference in opinion mattered because it goes to the heart of whether the US and Israel had eliminated Iran's ability to enrich uranium to levels that would allow it to make nuclear weapons, at least for years. Israel has long claimed – without evidence – that Iran plans to build nuclear bombs. Iran has consistently insisted that its nuclear programme is purely of a civilian nature. And the US has been divided on the question – its intelligence community concluding as recently as March that Tehran was not building a nuclear bomb, but Trump claiming earlier in June that Iran was close to building such a weapon. Yet amid the conflicting claims and assessments on the damage from the US strikes to Iranian nuclear facilities and whether the country wants atomic weapons, one thing is clear: Tehran says it has no intentions of giving up on its nuclear programme. So what is the future of that programme? How much damage has it suffered? Will the US and Israel allow Iran to revive its nuclear programme? And can a 2015 diplomatic deal with Iran – that was working well until Trump walked out of it – be brought back to life? In his first public comments since the US bombing, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the attack 'did nothing significant' to Iran's nuclear facilities. Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera's Resul Serdar said Khamenei spoke of how 'most of the [nuclear] sites are still in place and that Iran is going to continue its nuclear programme'. Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Tuesday said that 'preparations for recovery had already been anticipated, and our plan is to prevent any interruption in production or services'. To be sure, even if they haven't been destroyed, Natanz and Fordow – Iran's only known enrichment sites – have suffered significant damage, according to satellite images. Israel has also assassinated several of Iran's top nuclear scientists in its wave of strikes that began on June the DIA said in the initial assessment that the Trump administration has tried to dismiss, that the attacks had only set Iran's nuclear programme back by months. It also said that Iran had moved uranium enriched at these facilities away from these sites prior to the strikes. Iranian officials have also made the same claim. The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had accused Iran of enriching up to 400kg of uranium to 60 percent – not far below the 90 percent enrichment that is needed to make weapons. Asked on Wednesday whether he thought the enriched uranium had been smuggled out from the nuclear facilities before the strikes, Trump said, 'We think everything nuclear is down there, they didn't take it out.' Asked again later, he said, 'We think we hit them so hard and so fast they didn't get to move.' Without on-site inspections, nobody can be sure. Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday posted a statement saying, 'several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years'. That's a very different timeline from what the DIA suggested in its early assessment. But it's important to remember that the DIA and CIA also disagreed on whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003. The DIA sided with the UN's view that inspections had proven Hussein didn't have such weapons. The CIA, on the other hand, provided intelligence that backed the position of then-president George W Bush in favour of an invasion – intelligence that was later debunked. In that instance, the CIA proved politically more malleable than the DIA. Amid the current debate over whether Iranian nuclear sites were destroyed, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has also weighed in favour of the president's view. 'Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,' she posted on Twitter/X. But Gabbard has already demonstrably changed her public statements to suit Trump. In March, she testified before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003'. On June 20, Trump was asked for his reaction to that assessment. 'She's wrong,' he said. Gabbard later that day posted that her testimony had been misquoted by 'the dishonest media' and that 'America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly'. Gabbard's clarification did not contradict her earlier view, that Iran was not actively trying to build a weapon. Asked in an interview with a French radio network whether Iran's nuclear programme had been destroyed, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi replied, 'I think 'destroyed' is too much. But it suffered enormous damage.' On Wednesday, Israel's Atomic Energy Commission concurred with the CIA, saying Iran's nuclear facilities had been rendered 'totally inoperable' and had 'set back Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come'. Also on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the destruction of Iran's surface facilities at Isfahan was proof enough of Iran's inability to make a bomb. 'The conversion facility, which you can't do a nuclear weapon without a conversion facility, we can't even find where it is, where it used to be on the map,' he told reporters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated with Iran by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the US, China, Russia and the European Union in 2015, was the only agreement ever reached governing Iran's nuclear programme. The JCPOA allowed Iran to enrich its own uranium, but limited it to the 3.7 percent enrichment levels required for a nuclear reactor to generate electricity. At Israel's behest, Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 and Iran walked away from it a year later – but before that, it was working. Even though Trump has said he will never return to the JCPOA, which was negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, he could return to an agreement of his own making that strongly resembles it. The crucial question is, whether Israel will this time back it, and whether Iran will be allowed to have even a peaceful nuclear programme, which it is legally entitled to. On Wednesday, Trump didn't sound as though he was moving in this direction. 'We may sign an agreement. I don't know. I don't think it's that necessary,' he told reporters at The Hague. Any JCPOA-like agreement would also require Iran to allow IAEA inspectors to get back to ensuring that Tehran meets its nuclear safeguard commitments. 'IAEA inspectors have remained in Iran throughout the conflict and are ready to start working as soon as possible, going back to the country's nuclear sites and verifying the inventories of nuclear material,' the IAEA said on Tuesday. But Iran's powerful Guardian Council on Thursday approved a parliamentary bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, suggesting that Tehran is at the moment not in the mood to entertain any UN oversight of its nuclear facilities.'If Iran wants a civil nuclear programme, they can have one, just like many other countries in the world have one, and [the way for] that is, they import enriched material,' Rubio told journalist Bari Weiss on the Podcast, Honestly, in April. 'But if they insist on enriching [themselves], then they will be the only country in the world that doesn't have a weapons programme, quote unquote, but is enriching. And so I think that's problematic,' he said. Ali Ansari, an Iran historian at St. Andrews University in the UK, told Al Jazeera that 'there have already been calls to cease uranium enrichment from activists within the country'. But the defiant statements from Iranian officials since the US strikes – including from Khamenei on Thursday – suggest that Tehran is not ready to give up on enrichment. Trump has, in recent days, suggested that he wants Iran to give up its nuclear programme altogether. On Tuesday, Trump posted on TruthSocial, 'IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!' He doubled down on that view on Wednesday. 'Iran has a huge advantage. They have great oil, and they can do things. I don't see them getting back involved in the nuclear business any more, I think they've had it,' he told reporters at the end of the NATO summit in The Hague. And then he suggested the US would again strike Iran's facilities, even if it weren't building a bomb. 'If [Iran] does [get involved], we're always there, we'll have to do something about it.' If he didn't, 'someone else' would hit Iran's nuclear facilities, he suggested. That 'someone' would be Israel – which has long tried to kill any diplomatic effort over Iran's nuclear programme. At the NATO summit, Trump was asked whether Israel and Iran might start a war again soon. 'I guess some day it can. It could maybe start soon,' he said.
