Iran, US holding fifth round of nuclear negotiations in Rome with enrichment a key issue

Iran and the United States prepared for a fifth round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program Friday in Rome, with enrichment emerging as the key issue.US officials up to President Donald Trump insist Iran cannot continue to enrich uranium at all in any deal that could see sanctions lifted on Tehran’s struggling economy.Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi early Friday insisted online that no enrichment would mean “we do NOT have a deal.”“Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science,” Araghchi wrote on the social platform X.

“Time to decide.”The US will be again represented in the talks by Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Michael Anton, the State Department’s policy planning director.While authorities haven’t offered a location for the talks, another round in Italy’s capital took place at the Omani Embassy there.

Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi is mediating the negotiations as the sultanate on the Arabian Peninsula has been a trusted interlocutor by both Tehran and Washington in the talks.The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic, closing in on half a century of enmity.Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached.Iranian officials increasingly warn they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.“Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so,” a new report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency said.

“These actions reduce the time required to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a first nuclear device to probably less than one week.”However, it likely still would take Iran months to make a working bomb, exper...