The latest attempt by the United States to avoid a war with Iran took place last Thursday in Geneva, where Trump administration officials told their Iranian counterparts that they must abandon the plan to build a nuclear bomb. The meeting did not go well.
While the US delegation presented its position that Iran cannot enrich uranium for the next 10 years, the Iranian side hesitated, a senior Trump administration official told NBC News.
"Iran has an inalienable right to enrich uranium," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Americans. "And the US has an inalienable right to stop you," replied Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, according to the American official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At that moment, the Iranian Foreign Minister began shouting at Witkoff.
"If you prefer, I can leave," the US special envoy reportedly told Araghchi.
The senior American official stated that Witkoff and Kushner then informed Trump about what had happened, and the American president was "perplexed." Two days later, the US attacked Iran.
Iranians boasted they could make 11 nuclear bombs
Steve Witkoff recounted in an interview for Fox News that during the first round of negotiations, Iranian officials shamelessly declared that they control 460 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%. Enough to build 11 nuclear bombs, he said.
"In the first meeting, both Iranian negotiators directly told us, without any shame, that they control 460 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% and that they are aware that this could produce 11 nuclear bombs, and this was the beginning of their negotiating position," said the American official.
He added that the Iranian negotiators seemed "proud that they had avoided all kinds of surveillance protocols" to reach a point where they could obtain the 11 nuclear bombs.
Witkoff reiterated his statement that Iran's stockpile could be turned into military-grade material "within a week or 10 days," although this would require facilities that Washington says were destroyed in previous American attacks.
"We went there and tried to make a fair deal with them," said the US special envoy, but by the second meeting, it had become "very, very clear that it would be impossible."
"They wanted us to report positive results. It was not a positive meeting," he added.
Before the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on Saturday, Washington and Tehran had several rounds of discussions in an attempt to reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. The US demanded a 10-year halt to uranium enrichment.
Sources cited by Axios suggested that Washington could have used the negotiations to distract Iran from American military buildup in the region. Other sources, however, stated that the discussions were serious but ultimately failed.