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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday evening briefed IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, who is visiting Washington DC, on the latest developments in nuclear talks between Iran and the United States.
During the phone call, Araghchi highlighted Tehran's "goodwill and serious approach in pursuing diplomacy," according to the Iranian foreign ministry's readout of the conversation.
Iran has enough enriched uranium to produce several nuclear warheads and could do so within months, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Iran is not far from having a nuclear problem. They don’t have it, we know it,” Grossi said. “But the material for it already, it’s already there. To make a few warheads.”
He added that Iran had previously “conducted research and even testing some of the necessary elements for (a) nuclear device,” and that the IAEA lacks “full confidence that they have disappeared completely.”
While stressing the technical distinction between capability and possession, Grossi warned that the timeline is narrowing: “It would be a matter of months, not years."
The IAEA continues inspections in Iran, but Grossi described the current level of access as falling short. “I would say insufficient ... degree of visibility as we see it necessary.”
Talks between the US and Iran are ongoing, with Grossi calling the moment “fraught with opportunity, but of course pretty sensitive, if not dangerous.”
He referred to the unprecedented nature of the engagement, saying, “We see Iran and the United States talking directly in a way that had never happened before.”
Grossi said the IAEA lacks adequate visibility and called the current US-Iran talks “a moment of huge, huge, huge responsibility for everybody.”
Key technical issues, including uranium enrichment and potential weaponization, are central to the discussions. “It is obvious ... that the enrichment chapter is a very big chapter...and the weaponization chapter is another very important part of that conversation,” said the IAEA chief.
Grossi said China had expressed clear opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran during his recent meetings in Beijing, which he called, "a very firm commitment ... that we should not have an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.”
He concluded that verifying any future agreement would remain the IAEA’s domain. “We are the ones that are able—the only ones that are able—to say Iran has so much of this, so much of that.”
Grossi visited Tehran last week and held talks with senior Iranian officials ahead of the second round of US-Iran diplomacy in Rome.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if the negotiations fail.
The United States will oppose Iran’s proposal to allow Russian and Chinese oversight of its nuclear program and is expected to demand the removal of advanced centrifuges from Iranian territory, Israel Hayom reported citing an informed source ahead of a new round of talks due on Saturday.
American and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts will participate in the technical discussions beginning Saturday.
“It is clear that the United States will not agree to Russian or Chinese oversight. In addition to IAEA inspectors, Washington is expected to demand supplementary monitors,” the Israeli outlet reported, citing an informed international official familiar with the details.
“The US is expected to demand the removal of advanced centrifuges, used for rapid enrichment, from Iranian territory.”
Debate is growing in Washington over talks with Iran, with hawkish Republicans urging against appeasing Iran's theocratic rulers but some observers saying the mercurial president might have a historic shot at clinching a deal with Tehran.
The debate has exposed unexpected fractures: US President Donald Trump’s own allies are split, while some longtime democratic critics of the president have cautiously praised his approach—highlighting the unpredictability of the current diplomatic moment.
Robert Malley, the former Biden administration Iran envoy who was sidelined for allegedly mishandling classified information, told The Free Beacon he is “optimistic” about Trump’s upcoming nuclear talks with Iran.
Meanwhile, traditional opponents of diplomacy with Iran are sounding alarms. Republican Senator Ted Cruz posted on X that “anyone urging Trump to enter into another Obama Iran deal is giving the President terrible advice,” calling for unified support behind the idea that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Other hawkish GOP lawmakers have echoed that sentiment. In recent days, a group of Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Trump, urging him to pursue a Libya-style full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program—an approach that would go far beyond the terms of the original JCPOA.
Trump's former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley posted online that she had previously raised alarm bells over Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence: “There is no room for Iranian sympathizers in the national security team of the US.”
Confusion
But the rift may be rooted in Trump himself, says Greg Brew, an Iran analyst with the Eurasia Group.
“The fact that it is Trump who is sort of leading the charge to get a new deal with Iran when he himself departed the original JCPOA in 2018, called it the worst deal in history," Brew said, referring to an original 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
"Making this even more confusing, there is a decent chance that he himself favors the return to a deal that would look very similar to the JCPOA,”
Speaking on Fox news earlier this month, Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff seemed to suggest that a nuclear deal would permit Tehran to enrich uranium. A day later he appeared to walk back his comments and hardened his stance.
"A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal," Witkoff's official account on X quoted him as saying, adding that Iran must eliminate its nuclear enrichment.
Brew added the Trump team's ambiguous messaging is throwing both parties off balance.
“You have allies of Trump who hate the idea of diplomacy with Iran, who strongly back a military solution, perhaps even regime change of the Islamic Republic," Brew added. "Trump himself has said on numerous occasions that he's not interested in regime change, that he wants Iran to be successful, which is sort of throwing these groups into confusion."
Transformed political climate
Alex Vatanka, founding director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, told Iran International that the political landscape in 2025 is very different from when the JCPOA was first negotiated in 2015.
“The Republicans are in the majority and it's a Republican party that really doesn't want to say no to President Trump,” said Vatanka. “He probably has the best shot that I can think of any president in the last many years, if not decades.”
Vatanka noted that those with Trump’s ear right now are pushing for diplomacy, not confrontation.
“Right now, obviously with these ongoing talks, it's the folks who are arguing for diplomacy that seem to have the ear of President Donald J. Trump.”
As negotiations inch forward, Trump’s own political calculus—and how he chooses to navigate the diverse viewpoints on his home front—may determine whether US diplomacy succeeds or collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister of Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Tuesday in a telephone call in which the two allies expressed no disagreement on ongoing US-Iran talks, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday.
"They spoke particularly about Iran and the negotiations that are underway," she said. "The president has made it very clear repeatedly and I'll reiterate: there is no daylight between the United States of America and the State of Israel. He stands strongly behind our ally."
"He's made it quite clear when it comes to Iran that we want to see a deal and Iran has a choice to make."
