In the days before the latest flare-ups of violence in the Middle East, President Trump’s aides were negotiating with Tehran on four major elements of a nuclear agreement that U.S. officials contend would grind the program to a halt for 15 years or so.
The negotiations, according to U.S. officials and diplomats who have been briefed on the confidential talks, have gone considerably beyond discussion about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians have all but shut down for 101 days.
The result is what American officials describe as the hazy outlines of an accord — assuming the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and hard-line Iranian politicians do not overrule Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, or torpedo the much more detailed talks that the United States has proposed to hold in Switzerland this summer.
It is not clear whether talks will be set back by the latest developments, including Mr. Trump’s statement on Tuesday that Iran had shot down an American helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz and that the United States would have to respond.
According to the officials and diplomats, here are the four major points of negotiation on a nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran:
1. A lengthy suspension of uranium enrichment
The United States has demanded for months that Iran agree to conduct no uranium enrichment for at least 20 years. The Iranians have countered by offering a 10-year halt, but American officials believe they will settle for 15 years.
Earlier in the conflict, Mr. Trump said a 20-year ban would be insufficient, but on Air Force One returning from China on May 15 he told reporters that he would accept it if it was a “real 20 years.” It is not clear whether he would accept 15 years.
2. Iran’s current stockpile of enriched uranium is diluted, or “downblended”
The United States would work with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. inspection body, to dilute, or “downblend,” Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, according to two American officials familiar with the negotiations. American officials envision an active role in handling the nuclear material, something Iran has always forbidden. Iranian officials say the United States would serve only as an observer.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said repeatedly in recent weeks that any agreement would have to cover all 11 tons of enriched uranium in Iran’s possession, not just the half-ton of near-bomb-grade fuel.
The Iranians have not talked publicly about whether they are willing to give up their entire existing stockpile. But if it was downblended — rather than shipped outside the country — Iran’s leaders could say they still have possession of the fuel. Mr. Trump hinted at this approach in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend, saying, “We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on site or whether we take it off site.”
3. Iran dismantles its nuclear sites
The United States has demanded that Iran dismantle its three major nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan. The United States struck all three in Operation Midnight Hammer nearly a year ago, severely damaging them. Iran has discussed dismantling two facilities but insists on leaving one open, in part to demonstrate it has not surrendered what it views as a “right to enrich.”
That could prove problematic: Critics of the Obama-era agreement focused on his failure to close down Fordo, a deep underground site, which the Iranians later revived to produce near-bomb-grade fuel. Leaving one facility open would pose a similar problem unless operations are above ground, so it could be easily struck if Iran began working on weapons. Iran’s response is unclear.
4. Iran agrees to “snap” inspections
The United States wants international inspectors to be able to conduct “snap” inspections, anytime and anyplace inside Iran. It is not clear if the Iranian government will agree. As a practical matter, many of the suspect nuclear sites are inside Revolutionary Guards military bases, where inspectors have frequently been barred at the gates.
If Iran agreed to the four limits on the nuclear program, it would mark a significant advance over some of the concessions extracted from Tehran in the 2015 negotiations.
At least, it would be an advance on paper. But the accord would rely on Iranian cooperation at every stage: in guiding international inspectors and Western equipment to the nuclear site at Isfahan, where most of Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium is believed to be stored, deep underground, and in allowing inspectors into every suspected nuclear site in the country.
The discussions are at a precarious state. Iran and Israel exchanged fire on Sunday and Monday, and Mr. Trump said a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship was shot down off the coast of Oman on Monday. (The crew was rescued.)
But a trip that Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and his negotiating partner, Jared Kushner, took to the top-secret American nuclear lab at Oak Ridge, Tenn., last week was evidence that the United States is already preparing for how it would deal with Iran’s stockpile of 11 tons of enriched uranium, if a final deal was reached.
The negotiations have churned along far more slowly than Mr. Trump hoped. Several times in recent weeks, administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have predicted an accord was just days away. But something always got in the way, from strikes in the region that strained the cease-fire to the insistence of Iran’s generals that the United States had to show its seriousness by first releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.
Mr. Trump also added new demands more than a week ago, and the Iranians have sailed past deadlines he set for a response, saying they were still debating the issues internally.
Like the Obama plan 11 years ago, the Trump offers are based on a bet that Iran’s economic interests — in ending the American blockade of Iranian shipments, unfreezing $25 billion in assets and allowing Iran to sell oil around the world — will prevail in the country’s internal debates. But history suggests many Iranian generals and politicians consider opposition to the United States to be at the core of the Iranian revolution, no matter the economic cost.
Now, the question is whether the recent talks can survive the brief but fierce revival of combat operations, the largest breach yet of a two-month cease-fire — and the possibility of more.
Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday and Monday, demanding that he halt Israel’s attacks. During the calls, Mr. Trump argued that more Israeli strikes on Tehran and Iran’s energy and military infrastructure could undercut any effort to bring Iran closer to surrendering its stockpile of nuclear fuel, according to a U.S. official familiar with the conversation.
Just days before, Mr. Trump was blaming the new Iranian leadership for the weeks of delays in signing what would amount to a framework for a nuclear deal. “They’re strong. They’re proud,” he said in an interview on NBC taped on Friday, before the missiles flew. But he insisted that Iran was “going to have to do” an agreement because “they’ve got no choice.”
The Iranians, however, clearly believe they still have leverage — starting with their newly exercised power to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Two American officials said the negotiating channel between Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Witkoff proved critical on Sunday night through Monday morning, as Mr. Witkoff passed messages urging Iran to avoid escalation in the exchange of missile attacks with Israel. Those conversations, officials said, contributed to Iran’s declaration that it would stop firing on Israel. Mr. Trump then pressured Mr. Netanyahu to cancel a planned attack inside Iran.
For now, the interventions worked, and both sides pulled back. But with Mr. Trump vowing a response to the downing of the helicopter, it is unclear whether the nuclear negotiations will pick up where they were — at the cusp of agreement, according to the accounts of American officials — or be derailed again.
White House officials express optimism that the outbreak between Israel and Iran will prove a short diversion. The most optimistic of them believe detailed talks on the mechanisms of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program will begin in Switzerland perhaps by the middle of June.
But Iran hawks inside the administration argue — largely in private — that the American strike on Iran that began in February reinforced the view of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that Iran’s only true security lies in maintaining a threshold capability to build a nuclear weapon.
The first camp includes Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a key architect in Mr. Trump’s first term of the Abraham Accords, which began to expand the number of Arab states recognizing Israel. Together the two men visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Thursday to explore what kind of equipment and expertise would be required to remove and dilute Iran’s uranium, some of which is enriched to near bomb grade.
The visit, reported earlier by Axios, underscored how close they believe they are to an accord. The two men met dozens of Energy Department and intelligence experts who have been planning for how to recover and neutralize Iran’s nuclear stockpile.
But that assumes that the United States and Iran can resolve their continuing arguments over when Iran would begin to recover the first portions of $25 billion in frozen Iranian funds. As recently as this weekend, a senior Revolutionary Guards officer told CNN that much of the money must be released upfront. “If he wants to reach an agreement with Iran, this $24 billion is a test of trust,” said Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader.
“This is our own money, not America’s money.”
American negotiators have insisted that those funds be doled out only as “progress payments,” as Iran performs on parts of the agreement — starting with the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic.
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