Iran agrees in principle to dispose of highly enriched uranium, U.S. official says

Iran has agreed in principle to dispose of highly enriched uranium in negotiations with the United States, although a deal is unlikely to be signed this weekend, a senior Trump administration official said Sunday morning.

The official said the U.S. believes Iran's supreme leader has approved the template for a deal, but a final agreement still needs to be reached before anything is signed. It remains an open question whether that will happen.

Even before Operation Epic Fury, the Iranian system was frustratingly slow and opaque, the official said, and it has only become more so since.

Any final agreement would take several days to work its way through the system, the official added, and nothing would be signed today even if the agreement had been formalized.

The deal agreed to in principle would be a two-step process. It would begin with the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade, followed by negotiations on a mechanism for Iran to give up various parts of its nuclear program.

The U.S. wants Iran to commit to disposing of highly enriched uranium and to resolving other nuclear issues. The official said the administration believes this is a better deal than the one reached in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, which allowed nuclear enrichment up to a certain level.

Officials were still working through details of the mechanism for disposing of the uranium with the people empowered by the supreme leader to negotiate.

No decisions have been made yet on unfreezing Iranian assets, the senior official said, but any sanctions relief would be tied to the actual delivery of what the U.S. seeks in meeting the president's national security objectives.

The official also said the U.S. is in a very good place for a deal and believes it can get the Strait of Hormuz opened while meeting the president's objectives on nuclear material.

Vice President JD Vance, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner have been involved in the negotiations. The U.S. is trying to involve every Middle Eastern ally, the official said.

Mr. Trump said Saturday that the peace deal is largely negotiated, but he posted on social media one day later that he told his representatives not to rush into a deal and that time is on their side.

The difference between now and before the first six-week military campaign is that the Iranians are now making serious accommodations on points they were not willing to negotiate before, according to the senior official.