Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied that the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium could be transferred to the United States, as United States President Donald Trump had earlier said.
“Iran’s enriched uranium will not be transferred anywhere. Transferring uranium to the US was not an option for us,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Bakaei said on state television.
Earlier, Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US would get all of Iran’s nuclear dust, referring to nuclear material that was trapped under rubble after US strikes last year.
In comments to Reuters on 17 April, the US president said the United States would work with Iran to get its enriched uranium and move it to the US.
On 13 April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the US delegation to talks with Iran in Islamabad, told him that removing all Iranian uranium enriched to the 60 per cent level was a “key issue” for Trump.
Netanyahu added that Trump also wants to guarantee that “there will be no further enrichment of uranium in Iran in the coming years – even decades.”
Trump’s envoy to previous indirect talks with Iran, Steve Whitkoff, told Fox News in March that during the first round of Iran-US talks in early 2026, Iranian representatives said Tehran had a stockpile of enriched uranium sufficient to build 11 nuclear bombs. He said Iranian negotiators “without any embarrassment” said Iran had 460 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which they estimated was enough to build 11 nuclear warheads.
The US insists Iran should not have nuclear weapons. Tehran has said it does not seek to do so, but at the same time has insisted on its right to enrich uranium – which could lead to a stockpile sufficient to build nuclear warheads in a short time.
According to US media reports, the length of the ban on uranium enrichment was the main obstacle to reaching an agreement during US-Iran peace talks earlier this month in Islamabad.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, citing US officials close to the talks, reported that Washington sought a 20-year moratorium on enrichment in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions against Tehran; in return, the Iranian negotiating team offered a five-year term in return.
Neither U.S. nor Iranian officials confirmed the reports or commented on them.