Iranian lawmaker denies report of nuclear venture with US

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is backing the country's negotiating team in ongoing nuclear talks with the United States, while the armed forces remain on high alert, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday.

“Our armed forces have their fingers on the trigger and are ready to respond to any potential threat,” said Brigadier General Rasoul Sanayi-Rad, deputy political chief of the office of the Supreme Leader, according to Iranian media. “The field backs diplomacy.”

He added that the military, including the IRGC, supports Iran’s negotiators and reinforces their position at the table. “The IRGC backs the diplomacy team as a capacity of the system and keeps their hands full in the face of an adversary that recognizes our power,” he said.

Iran is urging members of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to strengthen legal cooperation in response to international sanctions affecting several member states, a senior official said during a visit to China on Tuesday.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said judicial systems within the SCO can play a key role in holding sanctioning countries accountable through legal mechanisms.

“The issue of legal discussions related to unilateral sanctions is on the agenda,” Gharibabadi said, adding that the Iranian delegation is pursuing “a more coordinated and multilateral approach” within the SCO.

The SCO includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, and several Central Asian countries.

The United States has positioned two aircraft carriers and a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers in the region near Iran, indicating potential military readiness amid ongoing nuclear negotiations, according to a Fox News opinion piece by Dr. Rebecca Grant, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a US-based think tank focused on defense and logistics.

“Two aircraft carriers and a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers are pointed straight at Iran,” Grant wrote. “Never before have we seen such a big forward deployment of B-2 bombers.”

She argued that a campaign to target Iran’s nuclear weapons program is “no longer far-fetched,” citing Israeli airstrikes in 2024 as having lowered the political and military risks of such an operation. “Frankly, the attacks on Iran’s air defenses carried out by Israeli F-35s and other planes last year have lowered the risk calculus,” she said.

Grant linked the deployment to President Donald Trump’s broader diplomatic strategy ahead of talks with Iran. “To keep the talks going, a big part of Trump’s strategy is to deploy to US Central Command the forces required to smash Iran’s nuclear weapons manufacturing capability,” she wrote.

The op-ed said that the United States can act unilaterally if needed. “The military calls this ‘sovereign options,’ because Trump needs no other country’s permission to launch strikes from aircraft carriers and bombers,” she said.

According to Grant, the deployment of six B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia—capable of delivering 30,000-lb. bunker-busting bombs—suggests planning for sustained precision strikes on Iran’s underground facilities.

The gap between what the United States seeks and what Iran is willing to accept may simply be too wide to bridge, warned Christopher Ford, who served as Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation during the Trump administration’s first term.

His remarks came at a panel hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as momentum appears to be building toward renewed talks between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program.

Ford voiced deep skepticism about the direction of the negotiations and suggested Iran’s strategy may be to delay any meaningful outcome until after October, when UN Resolution 2231 is set to expire—removing the legal basis for snapback sanctions.

“If I were on the Iranian side, that would be my negotiating strategy piece number one: draw this out,” he said.

The panel, titled From JCPOA to TBD: Assessing the Prospects for Diplomacy with Iran, followed the abrupt cancellation of a separate virtual session that was to feature Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi.

Araghchi had been added to the speaker lineup on Saturday for Carnegie’s high-profile Nuclear Policy Conference. But on the morning of the event, the think tank announced the session had been canceled after the Iranian delegation allegedly demanded last-minute changes that would have barred both the moderator and audience from asking questions.

Ford pointed to the incident as a revealing example of how Iran approaches diplomacy.

“Carnegie has gotten a bit of a flavor of the Iranian negotiating style in the past 24 hours,” Ford said. “The disingenuous bait-and-switch kind of thing. He knew what he was doing, and I commend you all for standing, you know, sticking to your guns on this.”

Richard Nephew, who helped craft US sanctions against Iran during the Obama administration and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, echoed Ford’s concerns and called Iran’s current approach opportunistic.

“If you're Abbas Araghchi, you have to be trying to see what you can get and see whether or not you can get a concessional deal that puts you in a better position,” said Nephew, a former US negotiator.

He argued that Iran is probing for sanctions relief with minimal nuclear concessions—and may be encouraged by internal divisions within the Trump administration over whether a deal should be hardline or more flexible.

“Their actual entry point is to see what they can get… They get sanctions relief with fairly minimal nuclear concessions.”

Nephew added that public comments from US officials suggest openness to a significantly looser agreement.

“I think if you look at the plain text reading of what the president and what Witkoff have said, one can read into that a much looser, much, much softer deal,” he said.

While expressing doubt that a lasting agreement is within reach, Nephew suggested that a short-term deal could still help stabilize the situation if it limits nuclear activity and includes robust IAEA oversight.

Both experts portrayed the current moment as one of fragile, uncertain diplomacy—with high stakes and little room for error.

"I am cautiously optimistic that this toxic dynamic may be about to change," foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in remarks prepared for the Carnegie conference on Iran's nuclear program, which cancelled his appearance following a dispute over the format of his speech.

Araghchi was referring to what he called misconceptions about Iran's peaceful nuclear program which he said hindered diplomacy in the past.

"President Trump seems aware of the catastrophic mistakes of previous administrations, which have cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars in our region—with zero gains for the United States," according to a draft of the speech he shared on X.

He said Iran remained committed to civilian nuclear technology and dangled the prospect of business opportunities with the United States in the sector.

"Our longstanding game plan is to build at least 19 more reactors, meaning that tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts are up for grabs. The Iranian market alone is big enough to revitalize the struggling nuclear industry in the United States."

Tehran would not negotiate in US talks about its defense given the volatility of the region, nor surrender nuclear capabilities allowed under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), he added.

"The scope of negotiations must also be clear; negotiations should remain focused solely on removal of sanctions and the nuclear issue," Araghchi said. "In a region as rough and volatile as ours, Iran will never put its security up for negotiation."

"Iran must not be treated as an exception within the global nonproliferation framework. As a signatory to the NPT, Iran is entitled to the same rights and bound by the same obligations as any other member," Araghchi added. "Respecting this principle of equality is essential to achieving a fair and lasting resolution."