Real Estate Attorneys Should Not Be Used As International Negotiators.
Remember how close the United States and Iran were to a deal? Well according to President Trump's favorite lawyer (for now) Steve Witkoff, Iran spent the negotiations bragging:
Witkoff: Iranians bragged of uranium for 11 bombs
US special envoy Witkoff, who together with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner led Washington’s negotiations with Tehran over the disputed nuclear program, said that Iran’s top negotiators boasted in the first round of talks this year of having enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff told Fox.
Trump has asserted that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities during the 12-day war last June, which would ostensibly render Iran incapable of immediately turning that enriched uranium into a bomb.
Still, Witkoff said the Iranian negotiators “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
He said that during that first meeting, the Iranian negotiators insisted on “an inalienable right” to enrich their nuclear fuel.
“We responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks,” Witkoff recalled. “Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed, and said, ‘We’re really in for it now.'”
Witkoff’s account seemed to comport with details of an NBC report earlier in the day that claimed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had shouted at the envoy about Iran’s enrichment rights during their meeting.
Witkoff reiterated his claim that the highly enriched uranium that Iran had stockpiled could be turned into weapons-grade within a week or 10 days, though this would again require nuclear facilities that the US says it destroyed in strikes last year.
Witkoff said Trump had dispatched him and Kushner to hold talks with Iran to reach a deal in which Tehran would agree to eliminate its missile program, cease its support for proxies, eliminate its navy “so we can have freedom of the seas,” and cease its nuclear enrichment.
“We went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them, and it was very, very clear that it was going to be impossible — probably by the end of the second meeting, but we then went back for the third meeting just to give it the last college try,” Witkoff said.
“They wanted us to report positivity. It was not positive, that meeting,” he added.
Huh. Well, according to Reuters, "Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions but has ruled out linking the issue to missiles," and PBS reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed, "We made a very good progress. We were able to define the main elements of a possible deal, and we discussed about those elements. Of course, there are still differences, but in most of the cases we have at least a general understanding how to resolve those questions."
And this comes after Trump's March 2025 letter to Iran which included many...restrictive conditions, including:
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters at the Capitol.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
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