US envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday that President Trump was “curious” that Iran hasn’t “capitulated” to US demands due to the major US military buildup in the Middle East and threats of war.
“I don’t want to use the word frustrated because [Trump] understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious, he’s curious as to why they haven’t, I don’t want to use the word capitulated, but why they haven’t capitulated,” Witkoff told Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law.
“Why, under this sort of pressure, with the amount of seapower, naval power, that we have over there, why they haven’t come to us and said, ‘we profess that we don’t want a [nuclear] weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do,’ yet it’s hard to get them to that point,” Witkoff added.
Tehran’s official position is that it doesn’t seek nuclear weapons and that the development of such weapons is banned by a fatwa issued by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iranian leaders have repeatedly “professed” that they don’t seek a nuclear bomb.
According to media reports, Iran has offered a deal that would involve it suspending its uranium enrichment program for three to five years and later restarting it at a civilian-grade level, far below the 90% needed for weapons-grade, as part of a joint nuclear program with regional countries. Iran has also publicly offered to dilute its stockpile of uranium enriched at 60%, though it’s likely buried underground following the US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Despite the US bombing those facilities, which forcibly suspended Iran’s nuclear enrichment, and President Trump’s insistence that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, Witkoff made the false claim that Iran could have uranium to make a bomb within one week.
“They’re probably a week away from having industrial-bomb-making material,” Witkoff claimed, facing no pushback from Lara Trump. The US envoy also confirmed that he recently met with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Iranian Shah who was overthrown in 1979, as the Trump administration has made clear its ultimate goal is regime change in Tehran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that he expects to hold another round of negotiations with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, this Thursday in Geneva.
