Trump backing away from Iran deal - Al Jazeera

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a nuclear agreement with Iran could not be reached “in 72 hours on the back of a napkin.”

“We’re not kicking it till later. Nuclear talks are highly technical matters,” Rubio said in an interview with the New York Times.

Rubio added that “seven or eight countries in the region” supported the current approach to negotiations with Iran.

The United States will not sign a deal with Iran unless Tehran gives up its highly enriched uranium, Fox News reporter Kayleigh McEnany reported, citing a senior Trump administration official.

“No dust, no deal,” the official was quoted as saying, referring to highly enriched uranium that President Donald Trump has described as “nuclear dust.”

The official said the United States and Iran were “95%” toward a deal and had agreed in principle on a framework covering “the nuclear stockpile” and “the Strait of Hormuz,” but were still negotiating language.

“We don’t have a deal until there is a deal,” the official said, adding that the US could resume military strikes if talks failed.

American negotiators believe Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has approved the “broad template” of a peace deal under which Tehran would agree “in principle” to dispose of its highly enriched uranium, the New York Post reported, citing a senior Trump administration official.

“They will open up the strait in exchange for us lifting the blockade, and they will agree in principle to dispose of the highly enriched uranium,” the official said.

The report said the agreement, which would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping after months of conflict, could still take days to finalize as both sides continue negotiating the wording of the deal.

“We feel quite confident that the supreme leader has signed off on the broad template,” NY Post quoted the official as saying.

“A lot of this debate is not really what happens to the stockpiled material, but it’s how the Iranians can sell it to their own hardliners and to their own population in a way that gets us what we need as well,” the official said.

“No one disputes that the stockpiled enriched material will be disposed of. It’s a question about how. And then simultaneously, while we’re figuring out that question of how, we’re going to have this thing where the straits open, the blockade is lifted and we get the economy some breathing room.”

US President Donald Trump said any deal he makes with Iran would be “good and proper,” adding that the agreement was not yet fully negotiated.

“Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Trump criticized the Obama-era nuclear deal, saying he would not make “bad deals.”

Senior Israeli security officials warned that a proposed US-Iran deal “does not serve Israel’s interests,” Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported.

The officials reportedly fear the agreement would give Iran time to recover economically and militarily, making it harder for Israel and the United States to resume fighting later.

Channel 12 said Israeli officials were focused on whether Iran’s nuclear material would actually be removed from the country, as US President Donald Trump has pledged.

The report said officials also warned the deal did not address Iran’s missile program or regional proxy network, and stressed that any agreement must preserve Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon.