CAIRO/WASHINGTON — The United States said Saturday that it had presented a new offer for a nuclear deal with Iran, as the Islamic Republic confirmed receiving it.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff “has sent a detailed and acceptable proposal to the Iranian regime, and it’s in their best interest to accept it.”
“President Trump has made it clear that Iran can never obtain a nuclear bomb,” Leavitt said in a statement Saturday, confirming that the US proposal had been communicated to Iran. She declined to provide further details.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his Omani counterpart had presented elements of a new US proposal on the matter during a short visit to Tehran on Saturday.
Araghchi said in a post on X that Iran “will respond to the US proposal in line with the principles, national interests and rights of people of Iran.”
The development came ahead of an anticipated sixth round of talks between Washington and Tehran to resolve a decades-long dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. The date and venue of the talks have not been announced yet.
CNN reported this past week that, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, a broad, interim nuclear agreement may be signed in the next round of negotiations, with White House officials and others hoping it will lead to follow-up talks and define specific markers for implementation.
Trump said on Friday that an Iran deal was possible in the “not-too-distant future.”
Earlier in the week, Trump told reporters he had recently warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to take actions that could disrupt nuclear talks with Iran. Those comments appeared to signal US concern that Israel might strike Iran’s nuclear facilities while US diplomatic efforts were underway.
Trump himself has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to achieve a deal.
One of the main sticking points in the talks between US and Iranian officials has been US insistence that Iran give up its nuclear enrichment facilities, a demand Iran rejects.
Trump, who has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
In the intervening years, Tehran has steadily overstepped the 2015 agreement’s limits on its nuclear program, designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb. Tehran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon, though it has been enriching uranium to levels that have no civilian use, and its leaders regularly threaten to flatten major Israeli cities.
Moreover, a new report by the UN atomic agency has found that Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the watchdog at three locations.
The findings in the “comprehensive” International Atomic Energy Agency report, requested by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors in November, pave the way for a push by the United States, Britain, France and Germany for the board to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.
A resolution would infuriate Iran and could further complicate nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.