Negotiations between Washington and Tehran looking shaky as Iran resists US negotiator Witkoff’s ‘red line’.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has derided demands from the United States that it halt nuclear enrichment as negotiations between the two countries hang in the balance.
“Saying things like ‘We will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is nonsense. No one [in Iran] is waiting for others’ permission,” said Khamenei in a speech reported by the country’s semi-official Mehr News Agency on Tuesday.
He added that he did not know whether talks would “bring results”.
Since mid-April, Washington and Tehran have held four rounds of Omani-mediated talks aimed at getting Iran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
However, repeated clashes between the pair have thrown the next round of negotiations, which the news agency Reuters said were expected to take place in Rome at the weekend, into doubt.
US President Donald Trump ditched the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by Iran and world powers during his last term in office. Intent on striking a new deal since his return to power in January, he has revived his “maximum pressure” approach against Iran, warning last week that talks needed to “move quickly or something bad is going to happen”.
Tehran confirmed on Tuesday that it has received and is reviewing a US proposal, but Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi had said the previous day that talks would fail if Washington insisted that Tehran refrained from domestic enrichment of uranium, which the US says is a possible pathway to developing nuclear bombs.
Iran currently enriches uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67-percent limit set in the 2015 deal but below the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead. It has repeatedly insisted its programme is for peaceful purposes and is “non-negotiable”.
However, US negotiator Steve Witkoff has dubbed the continuation of the programme a “red line”. On Sunday, he reiterated that the US “cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that a deal ensuring Iran would not have nuclear weapons was “within reach”.
However, he underlined, Iran would continue enriching uranium “with or without a deal”.
In addressing the talks regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, our U.S. interlocutors are naturally free to publicly state whatever they deem fit to ward off Special Interest groups; malign actors which set the agendas of at least previous Administrations.
Iran can only…
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) May 18, 2025