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Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Witkoff: Iran negotiators boasted of having enough enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US special envoy Steve Witkoff says Iran’s top negotiators boasted in the first round of negotiations earlier this year of having enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff recalls in an interview with Fox News.
However, the US also asserts that it obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, so it shouldn’t have the ability to turn that enriched uranium into a bomb.
Still, Witkoff says the Iranian negotiators “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
He says that during that first meeting, the Iranian negotiators also boasted having “an inalienable right” to enrich their nuclear fuel.
“We responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks,” Witkoff recalls.
“Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed, and said, ‘We’re really in for it now,'” he adds.
He reiterates his claim that the highly enriched uranium that Iran has stockpiled could be turned into weapons-grade within a week or ten days, though this would again require the nuclear facilities that the US says it destroyed in strikes last year.
Witkoff says US President Donald Trump dispatched himself and Jared Kushner to hold talks with Iran to reach a deal in which Tehran would agree to eliminate its missile program, cease its support for proxies, eliminate its navy “so we can have freedom of the seas,” and cease its nuclear enrichment.
“We went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them, and it was very, very clear that it was going to be impossible — probably by the end of the second meeting, but we then went back for the third meeting just to give it the last college try,” he continues.
“They wanted us to report positivity. It was not positive that meeting,” Witkoff says.
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