A right to enrich uranium is not on the table for surrender, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday, even as he renewed Tehran’s insistence that it has no interest in a weapon. “We can also state in writing that we have no intention of building a bomb,” he said.
His remarks landed the same day Iranian and American negotiators convened in Switzerland for discussions meant to convert a fragile truce into a durable settlement — and the same day those discussions were thrown into confusion over whether Iran’s team had abandoned the venue. According to state news agency IRNA, the delegation left the building where the negotiations were under way after meeting with the Qatari side. IRNA tied the departure to a message Trump posted as the session opened, repeating his threats against the Islamic Republic.
That account did not go unchallenged. A diplomat with knowledge of the proceedings said Iran’s negotiators had not pulled out, telling AFP that the delegation remained engaged and had given the mediators no indication of any intent to leave. The two versions were never reconciled publicly.
Trump’s warning had set the tone hours earlier. He demanded Iran halt what he called its highly paid proxies in Lebanon, posting that the US would hit Iran very hard again, just as it had the previous week, only harder, unless Hezbollah stood down. Iran’s chief negotiator, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, met the threat with one of his own. He said Washington would do well to be careful with its statements, warning that Iran’s armed forces were ready to respond, and adding that the more the Americans talk, the more Iran acts.
The substance of the opening round, by Iran’s own telling, stayed narrow. State broadcaster IRIB described a tripartite session involving Iran, the United States and Qatar centered on a comprehensive ceasefire in Lebanon and the question of Iran’s frozen assets. The nuclear file, Iranian outlets indicated, was not the focus of the first exchange.
Lebanon hangs over everything that follows. Citing a source close to the negotiating team, Tasnim reported that the Strait of Hormuz would stay shut until a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was respected, and until waivers permitting the sale of Iranian oil were issued. The memorandum signed days earlier had committed Iran to reopening the strait, making its renewed closure a direct strain on the deal’s first days. Israel, for its part, took no role in negotiating the memorandum and has pushed back against folding a Lebanon ceasefire into it.
The American side signaled it was settling in for a long night. A senior US diplomat said the delegation expected to keep working through the night, with discussions still going, and described the focus as clearing up Iran’s mixed messaging on the strait and setting up mechanisms to keep the waterway fully open.
