US sets new demands for Iran deal

WASHINGTON, Oct 7: United States Vice President JD Vance has called for Iran to make a “meaningful” reduction in its uranium enrichment capacity as part of an agreement to end the war, a demand experts say may signal a softening of Washington’s earlier insistence that Tehran abandon enrichment altogether. 

His comments come amid hardline rhetoric from other senior US officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reiterated that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, while President Donald Trump has warned the war will end through either “the nice way or the not-so-nice way”.

Officials in Tehran, meanwhile, have questioned whether Washington genuinely wants negotiations as the US-Israel war on Iran enters its eighth month.

As both sides stake out their positions, Simon Mabon, a professor of international relations at Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera that the prospect of Iran seeking a nuclear weapon has remained remote. 

Tehran’s negotiators are more concerned with sanctions, frozen Iranian assets, the US naval blockade and fighting across the region �" issues he says remain the main obstacles to a deal.

Vance told the Reuters news agency that Iran needed to demonstrate its commitment to not developing nuclear weapons by changing its enrichment programme. “If you don’t want a nuclear weapon, then why do you need 60 percent enriched fuel?” he said. 

“If you want to show commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, don’t build highly enriched fuel. That’s a very basic threshold issue.” �"AL JAZEERA