Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call with his American counterpart Donald Trump this week proposed moving Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia as part of a possible deal to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, However, Trump rejected this proposal. The Axios portal brought the information with reference to its sources, writes TASR.
“It is not the first time that such a proposal was made. However, it was not accepted. The US position is that we have to see that uranium is secured,” an unnamed US official told Axios.
On Monday, Russia reported on a phone call between the presidents who talked about the situation around Iran and Ukraine. In the phone call, Putin presented several views on how to quickly end the conflict regarding Iran, whose regime is an ally of Moscow. One of them was the transfer of Iranian uranium to Russia.
Russia made similar proposals already during the negotiations between the US and Iran on the nuclear deal in May of last year. even before the US and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, as well as in the weeks before the current war began.
In the last round of negotiations before the war Iran rejected the idea of a transfer and proposed to dilute uranium directly at its facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It is not clear whether Iran would now accept the proposal, writes Axios.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a press conference on Friday that The US “has a range of options” to take control of Iran’s highly enriched uranium. He said one option was for Iran to voluntarily hand over supplies, which the US would “welcome”. “They weren’t willing to do that during the negotiations. I would never tell this group or the world what we’re willing to do or how far we’re willing to go — but we certainly have options,” he added.
In an interview with Fox News Radio, President Trump indicated that securing highly enriched uranium is not currently a priority: “That’s not what we’re focusing on right now, but it could be at some point,” he said.
