Iranian officials told their US counterparts during crunch talks last month that the Islamic Republic possessed enough enriched fuel to build 11 nuclear bombs, President Trump’s special envoy claimed Monday night.
“Both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium],” Steve Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.”
Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner engaged in three rounds of indirect talks beginning in Oman Feb. 6 and concluding in Geneva, Switzerland Feb. 26 in what turned out to be a last-ditch effort to prevent US military action against Iran.
“Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel that they possessed. That’s how they opened up,” Witkoff recounted.
“We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks,” he continued.
“They then went on to say that beyond the inalienable right to enrich, that that was going to be their starting point. And Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed and said, ‘Well, we’re really in for it now.’”
Witkoff, 68, made worldwide headlines ahead of the Geneva talks when he claimed Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”
The special envoy expanded on those remarks Monday: “I know this: They have 10,000, roughly, kilograms of fissionable material. That’s broken up into roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, another 1,000 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium …They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material. So, there’s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it.
“The 60% material, Sean, can be brought to 90%, that’s weapons-grade, in roughly one week, maybe 10 days at the outside. The 20% can be brought to weapons-grade inside of three to four weeks.”
“They were proud of it,” Witkoff went on. “They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
Witkoff also claimed that he and Kushner, on behalf of the US, offered to provide Iran nuclear fuel for the next decade on the condition it was not used for any weapons program.
“They rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no — no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment for the purpose of weaponizing.”
With the US-Israeli war against Iran entering a fourth day, Witkoff described Tehran’s negotiating position as “silly,” but added: “They thought they could strong-arm us.”
“President Trump sent me and Jared there to really determine on his behalf whether they were serious about doing a deal that addressed his objectives, which are elimination of their missile program; elimination of their advocacy and support for proxies, which is destabilizing the entire Middle East; elimination of their navy, so we can have freedom of the seas and not be threatened with the shutdown of the Gulf [Strait] of Hormuz; and finally, no nuclear enrichment that can get them to weapons-grade, which means no nuclear bomb.
“And we went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them, and it was very, very clear that it was — that it was going to be impossible, probably by the end of the second meeting. But we then went back for the third meeting [in Geneva] just to give it the last college try,” Witkoff went on.
“It was not positive, that meeting.”
