Vice President JD Vance appeared to backtrack on U.S. demands on Iranian nuclear enrichment Tuesday, saying Iran needed to make a “meaningful” reduction of its capacity, but not suggesting it should be required to completely give up enrichment, as President Trump has previously. Iranian nuclear enrichment has been a key issue for the White House, with the president and other top officials stressing that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon as a core objective of the war. In February, the day before the war began, President Trump said of Iran: “They want to enrich a little bit.
You don’t have to enrich when you have that much oil … I say, no enrichment. Not 20%, 30%. They always want 20%, 30% … They want it for civil. I think it’s uncivil.”In April, he told CBS News that Tehran had agreed to have its enriched uranium removed from the country. In an interview with the Reuters news agency published Tuesday, however, Vance said Tehran should not “build highly enriched fuel,” and they should “do something meaningful on their enrichment capacity,” in what appeared to be a softening of U.S.
demands. Under the Obama-era nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which President Trump was highly critical of and pulled the U.S. out of unilaterally during his first term, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment to a purity level of 3.75%, with verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency. After Mr. Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, the Iranian regime steadily ramped up its program and built a stockpile of uranium enriched to at least 60%, which is a short technological step away from weapons-grade material.”If you don’t want a nuclear weapon, then why do you need 60% enriched fuel?
And if you want to show commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, don’t build highly enriched fuel. That’s a very basic threshold issue,” Vance told Reuters. “I think if they want to show a commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, they would do something meaningful on their enrichment capacity.””The goal here is to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon,” he added.
