Iran International
Diplomatic sources told Iran International this week that President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, “welcomed a three-stage proposal presented by the Iranian side” during the first round of negotiations in Oman on April 12.
The report published on Thursday said that Iran offered to temporarily reduce the level of its uranium enrichment in exchange for significant sanctions relief, including permission to export oil, as the first phase of an agreement with the United States. Later phases would involve Tehran making a “permanent” pledge not to enrich uranium beyond the 3.67% limit set by the Obama-era JCPOA. The arrangement would also include Iran shipping out highly enriched uranium to a third country in exchange for further sanctions relief, including the lifting of longstanding US sanctions.
The sources told Iran International that Witkoff’s positive response to the Iranian proposal surprised their delegation in Muscat.
What the diplomats did not clarify is the fate of roughly 17,000 uranium enrichment machines, known as centrifuges—arguably the most critical component of Iran’s current nuclear program. These are the machines capable of refining uranium to weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Under the JCPOA agreement, Iran was allowed to keep 5,000 machines in operation for ten years, with roughly 7,500 centrifuges kept in storage. That limitation that Tehran has already violated would end in 2025.
Since the US withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran has significantly increased its number of centrifuges in operation and deployed more advanced models with higher output. If Tehran is allowed to retain a substantial portion of this infrastructure, it could resume higher-level enrichment at any time.
The Arms Control Association said in 2022 that, “Several of Iran’s escalatory breaches have resulted in its acquisition of new knowledge and expertise that cannot be reversed.”
The Islamic Republic urgently needs sanctions relief, as its economy is in deep crisis and the national currency has lost nearly half its value since September. If the United States lifts some sanctions and unfreezes assets in exchange for only a temporary reduction in enrichment, Tehran will feel less pressure to move quickly toward further phases of the proposed agreement.
This could allow Iran to stall for time—as it did during the Biden administration—until President Trump nears the end of his term and the 2028 election campaign begins. This may explain why Tehran, according to the report, has prioritized the lifting of oil export sanctions in the first phase.
Iran has consistently insisted that the US must “show good faith” in any negotiation. This has typically meant lifting at least some of the sanctions reimposed by President Trump in 2018. Tehran has also called for an end to US “pressure,” a demand that could reduce Washington’s leverage in protracted talks if sanctions are eased too early.
Iran began enriching uranium to 60 percent in 2021 following a December 2020 parliament decision to retaliate against the US. Interestingly, for more than two years Iran waited during the first Trump term before taking any drastic retaliatory step and only upped the ante after President Joe Biden’s election. Until then, enrichment levels had remained below 5 percent.
If Iran retains its centrifuge infrastructure, it remains capable of resuming high-level enrichment—as it has done since 2021. One of the core criticisms of the JCPOA is that it never fully banned enrichment, and many of its key restrictions are now approaching expiration.
On the diplomatic and economic fronts, a partial or phased agreement would allow Iran to build closer ties with countries such as India, and trade more freely with China and Europe. That would reduce the urgency currently driving Iran’s negotiations—and could complicate US efforts to pursue a phased deal in a meaningful way.
Iranian media offer conflicting accounts of the country’s talks with the US, reflecting a fractured narrative and growing confusion.
Read the analysis here.
The plan was presented by Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi in writing to US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff during the three-hour talks.
Tehran proposed that in the first stage, it would temporarily reduce its uranium enrichment level to 3.67% in exchange for access to financial assets frozen by the United States and permission to export its oil, the diplomatic sources told Iran International.
In the second phase, the sources added, Iran would permanently end high-level enrichment and restore the United Nations nuclear watchdog's inspections if the United States lifts further sanctions on Iran and persuades Britain, Germany and France to refrain from triggering the so-called snapback of UN sanctions on Tehran.
In this phase, Iran would also commit to implementing the Additional Protocol, a supplementary agreement that allows the UN nuclear watchdog to carry out surprise inspections at sites not declared to the agency.
Tehran ended that compliance in February 2021 after Trump in his first term withdrew from a previous international deal over Iran's nuclear program in 2018.
The third and final stage calls for the US congress to approve the nuclear agreement and for Washington to lift both primary and secondary sanctions, while Iran would transfer its highly enriched uranium stockpiles to a third country.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and the US intelligence assesses that Tehran has not yet resolved to build one, but the Trump administration has warned Iran it must come to a nuclear deal or face attack.
A second round due to be held in Rome on Saturday could prove more rocky than the amicable first round in which Iran submitted its plan for a deal.
Washington toughened its public stance on Tuesday, with both the White House and Witkoff saying that the US goal in negotiations would be the wholesale end of Iran's nuclear program, a notion Iran has repeatedly called a non-starter.
Iran's proposal welcomed by Witkoff
US envoy Witkoff welcomed the proposals presented by the Iranian side, the sources told Iran International, surprising the Iranian delegation in Muscat.
Iranian officialdom appeared cheered by the first round of talks, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei remarking in a meeting with senior military commanders on Tuesday that "the initial steps have been implemented well".
A diplomatic source outside Tehran expressed skepticism to Iran International of the Islamic Republic's intentions in the talks and said it seeks to delay a foreign attack by staggering an agreement over several complex phases.
“One of the reasons Iran’s Supreme Leader agreed to allow the resumption of negotiations is the need to buy more time, because he knows Iran currently lacks the ability to defend itself against another airstrike," the source said.
“Iran is mainly stalling to buy time to rebuild its air defense capabilities, which were all destroyed by Israel in late October, and to restore its capacity to produce surface-to-surface missiles which were damaged in that same Israeli attack,” the source added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that his actions had previously thwarted Iran's ability to build a bomb, appearing to respond to a New York Times report that President Trump had halted Israeli plans to attack Iran.
"Netanyahu has led countless secret and open actions in the campaign against Iran's nuclear program that only thanks to them Iran does not have a nuclear arsenal today," the statement said.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Wednesday Iran was "not far" from possessing an atomic bomb.
"It's like a puzzle: they have the pieces and maybe one day they could put them back together. There's still a long way to go before we get there. But they're not far away, we have to admit that," he said in an interview with Le Monde.
"It's not enough to tell the international community 'we don't have nuclear weapons' for them to believe it. We have to be able to verify it," Grossi said.
In its latest report in March, the IAEA warned that over the past three months, Iran had significantly expanded its reserves of highly enriched uranium, and if this trend continues, its stockpile could theoretically be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.