{"id":23915,"date":"2026-03-03T11:52:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T11:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/23915\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T11:52:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T11:52:28","slug":"iran-claimed-to-have-enough-uranium-for-11-nuclear-bombs-us-envoy-witkoff-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/23915\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran claimed to have enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, US envoy Witkoff says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iranian officials told their US counterparts during crunch talks last month that the Islamic Republic possessed enough enriched fuel <\/a>to build 11 nuclear bombs, President Trump\u2019s special envoy claimed Monday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium],\u201d Steve Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity, \u201cand they\u2019re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.\u201d<\/p>\n

US special envoy Steve Witkoff (C) and Jared Kushner hold a meeting with Oman\u2019s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi (R) in Geneva. A third round of indirect talks between the United States and Iran, mediated by Oman\u2019s foreign minister, opened in Geneva on Feb. 26, 2026. Omani Foreign Ministry\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner engaged in three rounds of indirect talks beginning in Oman Feb. 6<\/a> and concluding in Geneva, Switzerland Feb. 26<\/a> in what turned out to be a last-ditch effort to prevent US military action against Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cJared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel that they possessed. That\u2019s how they opened up,\u201d Witkoff recounted.<\/p>\n

This satellite image, provided by Vantor, shows a close-up of the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran on March 1, 2026. AP<\/p>\n

An Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116) firing a Tomahawk land attack missile in support of Operation Epic Fury on March 1, 2026. US NAVY\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey then went on to say that beyond the inalienable right to enrich, that that was going to be their starting point. And Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed and said, \u2018Well, we\u2019re really in for it now.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Witkoff, 68, made worldwide headlines ahead of the Geneva talks when he claimed Iran was \u201cprobably a week away<\/a> from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.\u201d<\/p>\n

The special envoy expanded on those remarks Monday: \u201cI know this: They have 10,000, roughly, kilograms of fissionable material. That\u2019s broken up into roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, another 1,000 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium \u2026They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material. So, there\u2019s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 60% material, Sean, can be brought to 90%, that\u2019s weapons-grade, in roughly one week, maybe 10 days at the outside. The 20% can be brought to weapons-grade inside of three to four weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were proud of it,\u201d Witkoff went on. \u201cThey were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Witkoff also claimed that he and Kushner, on behalf of the US, offered to provide Iran nuclear fuel for the next decade on the condition it was not used for any weapons program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no \u2014 no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment for the purpose of weaponizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the US-Israeli war against Iran entering a fourth day, Witkoff described Tehran\u2019s negotiating position as \u201csilly,\u201d but added: \u201cThey thought they could strong-arm us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump sent me and Jared there to really determine on his behalf whether they were serious about doing a deal that addressed his objectives, which are elimination of their missile program; elimination of their advocacy and support for proxies, which is destabilizing the entire Middle East; elimination of their navy, so we can have freedom of the seas and not be threatened with the shutdown of the Gulf [Strait] of Hormuz; and finally, no nuclear enrichment that can get them to weapons-grade, which means no nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them, and it was very, very clear that it was \u2014 that it was going to be impossible, probably by the end of the second meeting. But we then went back for the third meeting [in Geneva] just to give it the last college try,\u201d Witkoff went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not positive, that meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian officials told their US counterparts during crunch talks last month that the Islamic Republic possessed enough enriched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[65,3188,7197,7294,69,5463,1048,4140],"class_list":{"0":"post-23915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-geneva","8":"tag-geneva","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","11":"tag-nuclear-weapons","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-uranium","14":"tag-us-news","15":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}