As Negotiations Stall Over Opening Hormuz, Talks on Iran’s Nuclear Program Are Delayed

As Tehran negotiators slow-walk talks with American counterparts over the Strait of Hormuz, one issue that seems to have been pushed aside is President Trump’s oft-repeated reason for going to war: ending the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program. Even as Mr. Trump is reportedly studying options for renewing military action in Iran, he sounds positive about negotiations, which are now being conducted in Qatar. The Iranians have “come a long way,” the president told reporters Wednesday. “It’s the denuclearization of Iran. It’s very simple. And Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon otherwise.”For now, though, Iranian officials insist on deferring any nuclear talk to the end, and claim their top issues — ending sanctions, compensating the Islamic republic for war losses, and shielding proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis — must be resolved first. Even if nuclear negotiations indeed begin in earnest, what can America do to block the future nuclearization of the Islamic Republic? “If the administration seeks to eliminate Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons fuel, it should insist on a permanent ban on enrichment and the full dismantlement, export, or destruction of any remnants,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ nonproliferation watcher, Andrea Stricker, tells the Sun. For now, though, Iranian negotiators are blocking even talk on the topic that seems most urgent to Mr. Trump — the opening of the Hormuz Strait to international traffic. First, they claim, America needs to remove sanctions, unfreeze funds, rebuild Iran, and shield the Islamic Republic’s proxies. Also, traffic in the strait, Iranian officials insist, will never return to the pre-war status quo ante. “The Strait of Hormuz was a divine gift that God gave us in this war, which is our greatest instrument of power,” the top Iranian negotiator, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, writes on X. Even negotiating is subject to negotiations. Earlier this week Mr. Trump sounded optimistic about dispatching top negotiators, special envoy Steve Witkoff and son in law Jared Kushner, to Doha. Iran, though “had not planned any meetings with the American side at any level over the next few days,” its foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Wednesday. Meanwhile negotiations over the nuclear file are not even on the horizon. That issue is meant to be ironed out within 60 days after the June 17 signing of a ceasefire deal. That deal, though, is increasingly derided by its critics as a memorandum of misunderstanding. Like other issues in it, the future of Iran’s nuclear program is open to broad interpretation. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, insisted last week that the memorandum “says explicitly that the nuclear activities that are going to be carried out with regards to the nuclear material facilities will be supervised” by his inspectors. Inspections must be launched soon, he said. Iranians, though, claim that the IAEA chief is misreading the memorandum. “These issues will be reviewed and decided only within the framework of a final agreement and as a result of practical action by the other side to end all sanctions and other measures,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in a swipe at Mr. Grossi. The IAEA reports that it cannot account for some 450 kilogram, or 990 pounds, of uranium enriched to a near-bomb level at 60 percent purity. That cache, which Mr. Trump calls the “nuclear dust,” is widely scrutinized as a top issue in debates over Iran’s ability to make a bomb in the future.Yet even if Iran can reach this cache of highly enriched uranium — which is likely buried under rubble of bombed facilities — can it enrich it to the level of 90 percent purity, which is needed to fuel a nuclear bomb? To do that it would need to access damaged machines in sites that were destroyed last June and earlier this year by Israel and America. “While most Iranian centrifuges at enrichment facilities targeted by strikes were likely destroyed, and Israel successfully targeted other centrifuge production sites, it is possible Iran has remaining stocks of advanced centrifuges,” Ms. Stricker says. “It is therefore critical,” she adds, “to restore IAEA monitoring and implement a robust new verification regime to fully account for and dismantle all such capabilities, including Iran’s capacity to manufacture new centrifuges.”

As Negotiations Stall Over Opening Hormuz, Talks on Iran’s Nuclear Program Are Delayed

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