US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran has received a proposal over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme, and warned Tehran to “move quickly" on it, a day after saying they were close to reaching an agreement.
A reporter asked Mr Trump: “On Iran, has the US given them a formal proposal? Has Steve Witkoff handed that over?”
"They have a proposal. More importantly, they know they have to move quickly or something bad – something bad's going to happen," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after departing the United Arab Emirates, according to AFP.
Iran denied it had received any proposal either "directly or indirectly". Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the messages being received by Iran and the world were "confusing and contradictory".
He said Iran was still willing to make a deal. But "mark my words: there is no scenario in which Iran abandons its hard-earned right to enrichment for peaceful purposes," he said.
Mr Trump did not elaborate on the substance of the apparent proposal. His comments came after multiple rounds of negotiations between US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Mr Trump on Thursday said Washington was close to reaching a deal with Tehran, a day after an Iranian official said his country was ready for an agreement in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
"I think we're getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this,” Mr Trump said during a round-table in Doha. "We'd like to see if we can solve the Iran problem in an intelligent as opposed to a brutal way – intelligent and brutal those are the two alternatives."
Four rounds of talks between the US and Iran, mediated by Oman, have been held since April 12, with both sides describing them as positive.
Negotiations have got into the “expert” level- meaning the two sides are trying to see if they can reach any agreement on the details of any possible deal. But one major sticking point remains Iran's enrichment of uranium, which Tehran insists it must be allowed to do and the Trump administration increasingly insists it must give up.
Mr Trump made the comment as he ended his trip to the United Arab Emirates, the last stop on his three-nation tour of the Middle East that also included Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
At nearly every event he attended in the region, he insisted that Iran could not be allowed to obtain a nuclear bomb- something American intelligence agencies assess Tehran is not actively pursuing though its programme is on the cusp of being able to weaponise.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke to journalists at the Tehran International Book Fair and said that Iran did not have any proposal from the Americans yet.
Mr Araghchi also criticised what he called conflicting and inconsistent statements from the Trump administration, describing them as either a sign of disarray in Washington or a calculated negotiation strategy. Mr Witkoff at one point suggested that Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67%, then later began saying that all Iranian enrichment must stop.
“We are hearing many contradictory statements from the United States – from Washington, from the president, and from the new administration,” Araghchi said. “Sometimes we hear two or three different positions in a single day.”
Iranian and American officials have been in Oman and Rome for the negotiations, mediated by Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi. The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic, closing in on half a century of enmity.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash air strikes targeting Iran’s programme if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels. Meanwhile, Israel has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own if it feels threatened.
Iran and the three European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal held talks in Istanbul on Friday to discuss the state of nuclear and sanctions-lifting negotiations, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Friday.
Following a meeting between deputy foreign ministers of Iran, the UK, France, and Germany at the Iranian Consulate General, Mr Gharibabadi said in a statement that “We exchanged views and discussed the latest state of play on nuclear and sanctions lifting indirect negotiations."
