Iran is prepared to consider steps on its stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of a nuclear deal with the United States, but the demand for zero enrichment is not on the table, Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said in an interview published on Sunday.
Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC that Tehran was ready to discuss curbs on its nuclear program, including measures related to its roughly 400 kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, if Washington was willing to lift sanctions.
“If they are ready to talk about sanctions, we are ready to discuss this and other issues related to our nuclear program,” he said, adding that it was too early to say what specific steps might emerge from negotiations.
Iran’s atomic energy chief said on Monday that Tehran could dilute its most highly enriched uranium in exchange for the removal of all financial sanctions, a point Takht-Ravanchi cited as an example of Iran’s flexibility.
However, he repeated that the idea of ending all uranium enrichment in Iran – a longstanding US position and a major sticking point in past talks – would not be accepted.
“The issue of zero enrichment is no longer raised and, as far as Iran is concerned, is not on the negotiating table,” he said.
Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington resumed in Oman earlier this month, with a second round scheduled for Tuesday in Geneva, Takht-Ravanchi confirmed.
“(Initial talks went) more or less in a positive direction, but it is too early to judge,” he said.
A US delegation including envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is expected to meet Iranian officials in Geneva, with Omani representatives mediating.
Takht-Ravanchi said the “ball is in the US court” to demonstrate it is serious about reaching an agreement, adding that Washington had publicly and privately, through Oman, expressed interest in a peaceful resolution.
While Tehran has signaled readiness to negotiate limits on its nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief, it has repeatedly ruled out discussions on its ballistic missile program. Takht-Ravanchi reaffirmed that position, saying Iran would not deprive itself of what it considers defensive capabilities.
“When we were attacked by the Israelis and the Americans, our missiles came to our help. So how can we accept depriving ourselves of our defensive capabilities?” he said.
Iran has also rejected linking the nuclear talks to its regional policies, including support for allied armed groups, an issue increasingly raised in US political discourse around the negotiations.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters at a foreign policy conference in Tehran that Friday’s Muscat talks were limited to the nuclear file and that Iran would not negotiate on missiles or regional issues.
“Zero enrichment can never be accepted by us,” Araghchi said, adding that talks should focus on arrangements that allow enrichment in Iran.
“We need to focus on discussions that accept enrichment inside Iran while building trust that enrichment is and will remain for peaceful purposes.”
Araghchi said results of the Muscat round were being reviewed and that both sides were waiting for decisions in their capitals on whether to proceed, with any next round expected to remain indirect and potentially be held outside Oman.
“The results of the talks are under review,” Araghchi said. “The overall approach of both countries is to continue the talks, and we are waiting for decision-making in the capitals.”
He added that Iran would not negotiate its missile program or regional policies, pushing back against US calls to widen the agenda.
“The missile issue and regional issues have not been on the agenda and are not on the agenda,” Araghchi said.
Tehran’s top diplomat described the first Muscat meeting as a test of seriousness, adding that talks would continue only if Iran concluded the United States was acting in good faith.
“The first session was a trial of how much we can trust the other side.”
He also said Iran had increased consultations with regional states compared with past nuclear diplomacy, and that Tehran had kept Russia and China informed of the process.
Speaking at the same event, Kamal Kharazi, head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations and a former foreign minister, said Tehran’s foreign policy should prioritize ties with neighboring countries while maintaining what he called resistance to coercive pressure from adversaries.
Ali Akbar Salehi, a former foreign minister and senior nuclear official, argued that Iran faced a broader governance challenge in translating its revolutionary ideals with practical policy tools, adding that strengthening the domestic economy and modern capabilities would make Iran’s foreign policy more sustainable.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, head of the Foreign Ministry’s political and international studies center, said the conference aimed to bridge academia, industry and the foreign policy establishment.
Araghchi framed enrichment as tied to sovereignty, saying no outside power could dictate what Iran may possess, and argued that diplomacy could work only if Iran’s rights were respected.
The Muscat talks came amid high regional tensions and an expanded US military posture in the region.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday that the talks were a “step forward,” adding that Tehran wanted its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to be respected.
While Iran’s foreign minister is right now visiting Oman for bilateral talks with the United States, in Tehran’s calculus, negotiations now promise steady erosion. War, by contrast, offers a chance – however risky – to reset the balance.
This marks a shift from the Islamic Republic’s long-standing view of war as an existential threat. Today, senior decision-makers appear to believe that controlled confrontation may preserve the system in ways diplomacy no longer can.
That belief explains why war is no longer unthinkable in Tehran, but increasingly framed as a viable instrument of rule.
At the core of this shift lies a stark assessment: the negotiating table has become a losing field.
This is not because an agreement with Washington is impossible. It is because the framework imposed by the United States and its allies has turned diplomacy into a process of cumulative concession.
When nuclear limits, missile restrictions, regional influence, and even domestic conduct are treated as interlinked files, Iranian leaders see talks not as pressure relief, but as strategic retreat without credible guarantees of survival.
From Tehran’s perspective, diplomacy no longer buys time. It entrenches vulnerability.
In that context, confrontation begins to look less like recklessness and more like a way out of a narrowing corridor.
War as a domestic instrument of control
Why war? Because war is the one scenario in which the Islamic Republic believes it does not necessarily lose.
Domestically, the regime faces its most severe legitimacy crisis in decades.
Widespread repression, the killing of protesters, economic collapse, and a society increasingly resistant to fear-based governance have eroded the state’s traditional tools of control.
Under these conditions, war serves a powerful political function. It rewrites the rules of governance.
In wartime, dissent can be reframed as collaboration with the enemy. Protest becomes sabotage. Opposition becomes a national security threat.
Emergency logic compresses public space and legitimizes measures that would provoke backlash in peacetime.
For the Islamic Republic, war is not primarily imagined as a catastrophe imposed from outside. It is a mechanism that restores hierarchy, discipline, and fear at home.
This logic is not unique to Iran, but it has taken on renewed urgency as the Islamic Republic confronts a society it can no longer reliably intimidate into submission.
Externally, Tehran’s calculations rest on another assumption – that the United States wants to avoid a prolonged war.
The experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with Washington’s cautious posture toward the war in Ukraine, have reinforced the belief that the US lacks the political appetite for a long, grinding conflict.
From Tehran’s vantage point, even a military strike would likely be limited.
Airstrikes, cyber operations, or narrowly defined attacks are forms of pressure the Islamic Republic believes it can absorb.
This feeds into a core element of Iran’s survival doctrine: without foreign ground forces, the system is not collapsible.
Military action that stops short of sustained ground involvement is therefore seen as manageable.
More than that, Iranian leaders believe escalation can be shaped by exporting costs across the region.
By threatening US allies and regional partners, Tehran calculates that a drawn-out confrontation would quickly become politically and economically unattractive for Washington.
In this reading, a limited war could push human rights concerns off the global agenda, expose divisions among Western allies, unsettle energy markets, and ultimately force a return to narrower negotiations.
This strategy, however, rests on a dangerous assumption: control.
Wars that begin with expectations of containment rarely remain contained.
In a volatile and heavily armed region, escalation chains are hard to manage, and actions Tehran defines as deterrence may be read in Washington as crossing red lines.
Still, the trajectory is clear.
The Islamic Republic has concluded that it loses at the negotiating table, but may endure – or even regain leverage – in sustained tension.
That belief explains why war is no longer treated as a last resort, but increasingly as a calculated, if perilous, component of its survival strategy.
