Special envoy Steve Witkoff lied when he claimed that Iranian negotiators bragged about having enough material to build 11 nuclear bombs, according to a diplomat with direct knowledge of how conversations unfolded, a new report claimed.
A Persian Gulf diplomat told MS Now that Iranian officials told Witkoff that the country was willing to give up enriched uranium as part of an agreement. They also said they enriched the uranium after President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had signed.
"He was explaining that all of this material can all go away should we have a deal and Iran can be relieved from sanctions," the diplomat said.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, however, dismissed the claims. "Only MSDNC would allow themselves to be used and abused by the evil Iranian regime to push false, anti-American propaganda in order to attack President Trump," she said.
"Unfortunately, Iran refused to participate in serious negotiations with the United States," Kelly noted , "so the President took courageous action to destroy their ability to have a nuclear weapon, launch or produce ballistic missiles, or arm terrorist proxies."
Other reports have noted that U.S. negotiators concluded that Iran was not serious about the negotiations after rejecting an offer to get nuclear fuel for free for an undetermined period of time.
Elsewhere, senior Trump administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said Iranians never really offered any clear compromise, and their proposals would have allowed Tehran to continue enriching uranium. Moreover, they refused to discuss their ballistic missile program and their funding of proxy groups in the region.
Another report published by The New York Times noted that Iran reached out to the U.S. a day after the war began to discuss terms to end it, but U.S. officials don't think either party is currently ready to take an offramp.
The outlet detailed that Tehran made the offer to the CIA through another country's spy agency. Israeli officials have also been urging the Trump administration to ignore the offer, which Washington doesn't consider to be serious either.
Trump has suggested he could follow the same footprint he did in Venezuela after capturing and replacing authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year.
"What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario," Trump told the NYT on Sunday. "Leaders can be picked." He noted that "everybody's kept their job except for two people," suggesting a similar approach could apply in Iran following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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