US particular envoy Steve Witkoff on Monday described the last, unsuccessful efforts to succeed in a nuclear settlement with Iran that finally collapsed forward of the United States launching main fight operations over the weekend.
“President Trump sent me and Jared there to really determine on his behalf whether they were serious about doing a deal that addressed his objectives,” Witkoff mentioned, outlining a sequence of conferences he attended with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son in regulation, in Geneva aimed toward curbing Tehran’s nuclear program.
According to Witkoff, the US delegation proposed a decadelong halt to uranium enrichment.
“We discussed with them ten years of no enrichment whatsoever, and we would pay for the fuel,” he mentioned. “They rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment to the purpose of weaponizing.”
Witkoff mentioned he and Kushner, who was tasked with brokering a deal with him, believed an settlement was probably unattainable by the finish of the second assembly, however returned for a 3rd spherical as a last effort.
“It was very clear it was going to be impossible, probably by the end of the second meeting, but then we went back to the third meeting just to give it the last college try,” he mentioned. “They wanted us to report positivity,” Witkoff added. “It was not positive that meeting.”
The collapse of the talks led to Trump’s announcement of joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Around the time of the operation, Trump publicly urged Tehran to make concessions. “They should make a deal, but they don’t want to quite go far enough,” he mentioned Friday throughout a cease in Texas. “They don’t want to say the key words: ‘We’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.’”