Axios is reporting that President Trump and much of is Cabinet held a meeting in the Situation Room this morning on the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear weapons program.
This comes after Steve Witkoff suggested that he wasn’t opposed to Iran continuing their nuclear program as long as they aren’t enriching Uranium to weapons grade level. There were a lot of people who didn’t like this.
Here’s more on the meeting:
President Trump held a meeting on Tuesday morning in the White House situation room about the ongoing nuclear deal negotiations with Iran, two sources with direct knowledge told Axios.
The high-level meeting with all of the Trump administration’s top national security and foreign policy officials present was focused on discussing the U.S. position in the next round of talks planned for Saturday, the sources said.
Ahead of the meeting Trump spoke on the phone with the Sultan of Oman Haitham bin Tariq and discussed the Omani mediation between the U.S. and Iran.
“The two leaders discussed ways to back these negotiations to achieve the desired outcomes,” the Omani state news agency said.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, CIA director John Ratcliffe and other top officials participated in the situation room meeting on Tuesday.
The meeting took place amid intense debate within the administration over the way forward in the negotiations and the compromises the U.S. should or shouldn’t make.
Vance and Witkoff think diplomacy could lead to a nuclear deal and think the U.S. should be ready to make some compromises in order to get it.
Other senior members of the administration, including Rubio and Waltz, are highly skeptical and support a maximalist approach to the negotiations.
Trump himself is sending mixed messages. He has said he wants a deal and thinks the nuclear crisis is solvable through diplomacy but has also threatened Iran with a military strike.
The White House declined to comment.
If Iran has a nuclear program at all, it will be for enriching uranium to weapons grade level. That’s the only reason they have a nuclear program to begin with. And just like with Obama, they can’t be trusted to allow for inspectors to ensure they are not planning to make nuclear weapons.
So in my opinion, their entire nuclear program should be dismantled, one way or the other.
It continues…
On Monday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Iran has to move fast in the negotiations and stressed that Iran “might be tapping us along” in the nuclear talks.
Trump threatened again to use military power against Iran. “If we have to do something very harsh we will do it,” he said.
Below is the reporting on the remarks by Witkoff:
On Monday evening, Witkoff said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that the first round of talks with Iran last Saturday in Oman was positive.
Witkoff said the U.S. position is Iran would have to stop enriching uranium to the level of 20% and to the near weapons-grade level of 60%, but didn’t rule out that the Iranians would be able to continue enriching uranium to the level of 3.67% that is needed for a civilian nuclear energy program.
Witkoff added that any nuclear deal would have to verify Iran’s enrichment levels and that it doesn’t build ballistic missiles that can deliver a nuclear weapon or build triggers that can detonate nuclear bombs.
Witkoff’s remarks were very different from what Waltz said in recent weeks about the need to dismantle the entire nuclear program.
His remarks also contradicted what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his meeting with Trump last week about the need to fully dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, like what he claimed happened in Libya in 2003.
On Tuesday morning, Witkoff clarified his remarks and wrote on X that “any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Mark Levin responded to Witkoff’s clarification, saying it sounds ‘better’ than his previous remarks: