Regime prepared to dispose of enriched uranium, US official claims, after Netanyahu says Trump assured him nuclear program will be fully dismantled; no Iranian confirmation, and Tehran says it has legal right to run Hormuz
The United States is expected to sign an agreement to end the war with Iran “in the coming days,” a senior US official told reporters on Sunday, adding that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has approved the deal’s broad framework. There was no Iranian confirmation of the claim.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received assurances from US President Donald Trump that Iran’s nuclear program would be dismantled under the terms of any permanent accord with Iran.
Responding to heavy criticism of the reported terms from within the Republican Party, and profound concern in Israel that the agreement Trump described on Saturday does not directly address key goals of the war — thwarting Iran’s rogue nuclear program, removing its stockpile of enriched uranium, limiting its ballistic missile program, and halting its support of proxy terror groups including Hezbollah and Hamas — Trump claimed his critics do not know what they are talking about. “Don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about,” he urged on Truth Social.
Trump also posted Sunday that the negotiations were “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner, and I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side.” He further suggested that Iran, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, perhaps “would like to join [the Abraham Accords], as well!”
According to the US official, as cited by Channel 12, the Memorandum of Understanding that Trump said Saturday was being finalized would not be signed by the end of Sunday, as there was still wording that each side wanted to work on.
The official said the Iranians gave assurances, verbal and in writing, that any subsequent permanent deal would include the “disposal” of all enriched uranium, whether enriched to higher or lower levels, although they did not specify how the stockpiles would be disposed of, the TV report said. The Iranians also agreed to suspend enrichment for a period to be negotiated.
There was no Iranian confirmation of these claims either.
Although the deal appeared close to completion, the US official stressed that nothing was finalized, the report added. “Without the uranium [being taken care of], there’ll be no dollars [for Iran],” the US official was quoted as saying.
The MoU expected to be signed between the US and Iran has been widely reported to provide, first, for a 60-day extension of the current ceasefire.
The Strait of Hormuz will be reopened and Iran will remove the mines it has deployed in the strait in recent months. The US, for its part, will gradually remove its blockade of Iran’s ports. During the 60 days, Iran will be free to sell oil, and the US will lift some sanctions. If Iran implements various other steps, the US will unfreeze billions of dollars of Iranian assets held overseas. During the 60 days of negotiations, limitations on Iran’s nuclear program will be discussed.
Appearing to dent Trump’s claim on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened under the deal, Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said on Sunday that managing the Strait of Hormuz is Tehran’s “legal right,” in order to ensure national security.
“Iran’s management of Hormuz Strait ends 50 years of insecurity in the Persian Gulf,” Iranian news agencies quoted Rezaei as saying.
Trump had declared on Saturday afternoon that the US and Iran were finalizing a deal to end the war, saying that the Memorandum of Understanding “has been largely negotiated” and would be announced shortly. The New York Times reported that the US has almost completely excluded Israel from the negotiations.
Netanyahu: We agreed any final agreement must eliminate nuclear danger
Amid reports in recent days that Israel is deeply concerned and dissatisfied with the terms of the agreement — because it does not directly address the Iranian nuclear threat and other central goals of the war, instead delaying discussion of them — Netanyahu issued his first public remarks on the deal on Sunday, saying he had spoken to Trump on Saturday night about the ongoing negotiations.
He said the two leaders “agreed that any final agreement with Iran must eliminate the nuclear danger.”
“That means dismantling Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites and removing its enriched nuclear material from its territory,” Netanyahu continued, though it was unclear that Trump reassured him specifically about those terms.
He further claimed Israel would retain its freedom of operation against Hezbollah, saying the US president had “also reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against threats on every front, including Lebanon.”
In a separate post highlighting Israel’s apparently united front with Washington on the emerging deal, Netanyahu shared an AI-generated image of him and Trump on X on Sunday, declaring that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”
The premier was not the only one to address the emerging deal with AI-generated images.
Trump, on Sunday afternoon, posted an AI-generated image of a US drone destroying an Iranian navy ship, captioned “Adios.”
It was unclear what message he was trying to convey with the post amid the ongoing push for a peaceful resolution to the war.
Hours later, in another Sunday social media post, Trump vowed that a deal reached with Iran “will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by [former president Barack] Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.
“Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet. So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!” he declared.
Overnight, Iran’s military spokesperson Ibrahim Al-Fiqar tweeted an AI-generated image of Trump on his knees bowing before Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, with the caption, “The end.”
Israel and the US launched their campaign against Iran on February 28 in a bid to destabilize the regime and destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile capacities. Iran responded with missile and drone strikes across the region, including at Israel. Its proxies in Iraq and Lebanon also carried out attacks, with Israel launching massive airstrikes in Lebanon in response to the Hezbollah terror group’s rocket barrages.
The US and Iran reached a temporary ceasefire on April 8, and it has held up since. Though Iran tied the agreement to a halt in the fighting in Lebanon, it only lowered the intensity of clashes, which have continued.
As reported by The Times of Israel