The United States presented its first formal proposal to Tehran for elements of a nuclear deal on Saturday, just hours after U.N. inspectors reported a major surge over the past three months in the size of Tehran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
The document was described by officials familiar with the diplomatic exchanges as a series of bullet points but not a full draft of an agreement. It calls for Iran to cease all enrichment of uranium and proposes the creation of a regional consortium to produce nuclear power that would involve Iran; Saudi Arabia and other Arab states; and the United States.
The offer marked the first time since negotiations began in early April that the lead American negotiator, Steve Witkoff, had put forth a proposal on paper.
The delivery of the document was made public in a tweet by Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, who said it had been delivered by his counterpart from Oman, which has been mediating the talks. The White House later confirmed the action.
“President Trump has made it clear that Iran can never obtain a nuclear bomb,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Special Envoy Witkoff has sent a detailed and acceptable proposal to the Iranian regime, and it’s in their best interest to accept it. Out of respect for the ongoing deal, the administration will not comment on details of the proposal to the media.”
Many experts are skeptical that Iran’s aging supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will approve a deal that would essentially shut down the advanced nuclear production facilities that the Iranians have spent billions to construct, and that have been the targets of sabotage by the United States and Israel.
Mr. Araghchi said Iran would “respond to the U.S. proposal in line with the principles, national interests and rights of the people of Iran.” In recent weeks, Iranian officials have publicly rejected U.S. demands to terminate all nuclear enrichment, declaring they would never give up their right to produce civilian-grade nuclear fuel. That capability gives Iran the status of a threshold nuclear state, one that could rapidly build a weapon if it decided to.
The revelation of Iran’s production surge of uranium enriched to 60 percent, just below bomb-grade, was a vivid illustration of its effort to gain leverage in the negotiation. The increase gives Tehran the capability to produce the fuel for roughly 10 weapons, up from around five or six when President Trump was inaugurated in January.
A pair of reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency, obtained by The New York Times, portray an Iranian regime that has decided to surge ahead with its production, presumably to gain leverage in the negotiations with Mr. Witkoff, who is the administration’s envoy for the Middle East.
The director general of the I.A.E.A., Rafael M. Grossi, said the report on Iran’s production surge indicated that “we need to get to a diplomatic resolution, under a very robust I.A.E.A. inspection system.” In recent years, Iran has disabled many of the agency’s cameras and sensors at key sites, but has allowed inspectors to come into the country and measure its growing stockpiles of enriched uranium.
In the agency’s quarterly assessment of Iran’s nuclear production and stockpiles, Mr. Grossi wrote that “the significantly increased production and accumulation of highly enriched uranium by Iran, the only nonnuclear-weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern.”
That report concluded that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — near the 90 percent needed to produce weapons — was now around 900 pounds, up from 605 pounds in February. While Iran could quickly boost that fuel to bomb-grade, it would take months, and maybe up to a year, to produce a workable weapon. U.S. intelligence officials concluded earlier this year that a secret team of Iranian scientists was working on a faster, cruder approach to building weapons, if need be.
The surge in Iranian production comes at a time when Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has urged Mr. Trump to join Israel in a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mr. Netanyahu has argued that Iran’s primary fuel-production facilities in the cities of Natanz and Fordow are more vulnerable than at any time in years, after Israeli forces struck Iranian air defenses last October. The Times reported in April that Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as May, but was waved off by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump confirmed that story earlier this week, saying he had told Israel it would be “inappropriate” for it to bomb the facilities when he thought he was close to a deal. But he also contended that any diplomatic agreement reached by Mr. Witkoff would enable the United States to dismantle Iran’s nuclear production facilities — something the Iranians have said they would never permit.
“I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody’s getting killed,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “We can blow up a lab, but nobody’s going to be in the lab.”
As the two I.A.E.A. reports began to circulate on Saturday morning, Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement saying that they painted a “grave” picture and that nations around the world must “act now to stop Iran.” But he issued no military threats. Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and is widely believed to possess a nuclear arsenal of its own, of around 100 weapons.
The second report issued by the agency described a continued effort by Iran to stonewall the agency’s inspectors as they have sought access, for more than nine years, to military sites where the agency believed the country conducted nuclear experiments more than two decades ago.
Experts suspect those experiments were part of a covert program, in the early 2000s, to develop a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence concluded, during the Bush administration, that the program was suspended in 2003. Israel maintains that elements of the program continued, driven by Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel assassinated Mr. Fakhrizadeh as he drove to his weekend house in late 2020, in an artificial intelligence-assisted, robotic attack.
Iran has steadfastly denied that the sites were part of a nuclear program. It declared on Saturday that the report included “baseless allegations that cannot be validated.”
The report describes, in dry technical language, how Iranian officials provided intelligence reports and news stories that they said proved that nuclear material had been planted at the sites. The inspectors dismissed the Iranian explanation, citing a “lack of technically credible answers.”
It is unclear whether Mr. Witkoff, as part of any final agreement, will insist that Iran come clean about past activity.