Iran Signals Willingness to Talk With Trump About Nuclear Arms Control

Tehran said it won’t consider giving up its nuclear program entirely but could discuss ways to stay nuclear-weapon free.

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, on April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. West Asia News Agency via Reuters

Iran has signaled it is open to some dialogue with Washington if the talks are limited to addressing concerns about its nuclear program.

“If the objective of negotiations is to address concerns vis-à-vis any potential militarization of Iran’s nuclear program, such discussions may be subject to consideration,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations announced in a March 9 post on social media platform X.

The statement by Iran’s U.N. mission comes two days after President Donald Trump announced he had reached out to Tehran, seeking to negotiate a new nuclear agreement to replace the one he withdrew the United States from during his first administration.

Trump, in recent days, has reiterated his line that Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons and raised the prospect of military action to prevent this outcome.

On March 8, a day after Trump announced his outreach, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the idea of talks with “foreign governments and domineering figures.”

Iran’s ruling cleric said the agenda of such talks would be to impose new restrictions on his nation.

In February, Trump issued a new national security memorandum, ordering a return to the “maximum pressure” campaign of his first term, directed toward Iran.

The White House said the goal of this reprised campaign of economic sanctions would be to undermine Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and to counter Tehran’s efforts to build missiles and other “asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities.”

The White House added that it would employ this pressure campaign in hopes of toppling Iran’s network of proxies throughout the Middle East.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in another statement posted to X on March 9, said that negotiations must not involve coercion.

“We will not negotiate under pressure and intimidation. We will not even consider it, no matter what the subject may be. Negotiation is different from bullying and issuing diktats,” Araghchi wrote.

Araghchi said Iran is currently consulting with France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China—all of whom remain parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—about ways to “build more confidence and more transparency” in its nuclear energy program in return for “the lifting of unlawful sanctions.” 

While the Iranian U.N. mission said Tehran is willing to address international concerns about the country obtaining nuclear weapons, it said the nation would not give up its nuclear program entirely, and such talks “will never take place.”

“Iran’s nuclear energy program has always been—and will always remain—entirely peaceful. There is fundamentally therefore no such thing as its ‘potential militarization,’” Araghchi stated in his March 9 statement.

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised alarm about Iran’s continued pursuit of highly enriched uranium.

In a Feb. 26 report, the IAEA assessed that Iran has stockpiled about 605 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium.

Iran would need to enrich uranium to 90 percent to achieve weapons-grade fissile material.

“The significantly increased production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,” the U.N. nuclear monitor wrote in its February report.

Time may be limited for Tehran to come to the negotiating table.

“We can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily,” Trump said in a March 7 interview with Fox Business, “but the time is happening now. The time is coming up.”