Iran's Nuclear Slowdown May Prop Up US Hopes to Ease Tensions

FILE PHOTO: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits the Iranian centrifuges in Tehran, Iran June 11, 2023. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits the Iranian centrifuges in Tehran, Iran June 11, 2023. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
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Iran's Nuclear Slowdown May Prop Up US Hopes to Ease Tensions

FILE PHOTO: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits the Iranian centrifuges in Tehran, Iran June 11, 2023. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits the Iranian centrifuges in Tehran, Iran June 11, 2023. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iran's limited steps to slow its buildup of near-weapons-grade uranium may help ease US-Iranian tensions but do not signify progress toward a wider nuclear deal before the 2024 US elections, say analysts.

According to UN nuclear watchdog reports seen by Reuters, Iran has reduced the rate at which it is making uranium enriched up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons grade, and has diluted a small fraction of its 60% stockpile.

But that stockpile continues to grow. Iran now has nearly enough uranium enriched to 60%, if refined further, for three nuclear bombs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) theoretical definition. It also has enough uranium enriched to a lower level to make even more bombs.

Iran has also failed to resolve IAEA concerns about uranium traces found at two undeclared sites or to make progress on restoring monitoring cameras despite long-standing pressure from the IAEA and Western powers to do so.

According to Reuters, non proliferation analysts say Iran's nuclear slowdown may be enough for the United States and Iran to keep exploring what they describe as "understandings" - which Washington has never acknowledged - to lower tensions over nuclear and other issues.

That does not necessarily imply any real curbs to Iran's nuclear program ahead of the Nov. 5, 2024 US election, they said, but it may help US President Joe Biden avoid a politically damaging crisis with Iran as he seeks re-election.

"The slowdown of the 60% accumulation is a clear sign Tehran is open to advancing the de-escalatory 'understandings' with Washington," said Henry Rome of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Rome said the slowdown and expectations of a US-Iranian prisoner exchange this month, set "the stage for additional diplomacy this fall around the nuclear program, albeit without the goal of reaching a new deal until after the US presidential elections.

"For Washington, there is probably a low bar for what Iran needed to do for the purposes of 'de-escalation,'" he added. "Iran has likely crossed that bar."

Biden's main objective appears to be keeping a lid on tensions, which range from Tehran's nuclear program to attacks by Iranian-backed militias on US interests in the Middle East.

"Iran has taken its foot off the gas in some areas but it's not pumping the brakes on the nuclear program," analyst Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative said of Iran's recent steps, calling them "de-escalation lite."

"The nonproliferation value of the steps Iran took is relatively small, but the point of the (US) de-escalation policy isn't to solve the nuclear program right now but to build in a political cushion and avoid a crisis," he said.

"Until next year's election, it seems the administration wants calm and is willing to pay the price in vast enrichment of the Iranian regime," said Elliott Abrams, former US President Donald Trump's special representative for Iran now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Abrams was alluding to rising Iranian oil exports despite US sanctions and the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar as part of the prisoner exchange.

While the Biden administration has argued that the money is going from one restricted account to another and can only be spent for humanitarian purposes, it seems clear Iran will have greater access to them in Qatar than it did in South Korea.

The State Department has danced around whether it has struck any 'understandings' with Iran in part because an admission that it has cut a deal with Tehran over the Iranian nuclear program could by law trigger a US congressional review.

A State Department spokesman on Tuesday said he had nothing to add beyond mid-August comments in which the department denied any US-Iran nuclear pact and did not rule out the possibility of unwritten understandings.

After taking office in January 2021, Biden tried to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under which Iran had restricted its nuclear program in return for relief from US, European Union (EU) and UN sanctions.

Trump, a Republican, reneged on that deal in 2018, arguing it was too generous to Tehran, and restored broad US economic sanctions against Iran.

Efforts to revive that deal appeared to die about a year ago, when diplomats say Iran rejected what EU mediators called their final offer.

Diplomats regard that deal as beyond resurrection because of Iran's advances - notably in running advanced centrifuges that have a much bigger output - but analysts said there may be room for more serious nuclear talks after the US elections.

Asked why Iran slowed its program, a Western diplomat said "I think that's part of discussions that they've been having with the US and it's part of the wider deal, the non-deal deal."

"It's better than nothing, but I would hardly count it as a massive bit of progress," he added.



UN Nuclear Watchdog Says US-Iran Talks at 'Very Crucial' Stage



In this photo released by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi attends a meeting with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran via AP)
In this photo released by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi attends a meeting with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran via AP)
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UN Nuclear Watchdog Says US-Iran Talks at 'Very Crucial' Stage



In this photo released by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi attends a meeting with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran via AP)
In this photo released by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi attends a meeting with the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran via AP)

Talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program are “in a very crucial” stage, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Thursday while on a visit to Tehran.

The comments by Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iran included an acknowledgment his agency likely would be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached. Iran and the US will meet again Saturday in Rome for a new round of talks after last weekend's first meeting in Oman, The AP news reported.

The stakes of the negotiations Saturday and the wider geopolitical tensions in the Mideast couldn't be higher, particularly as the Israel-Hamas war rages on in the Gaza Strip.
US President Donald Trump repeatedly has threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Grossi visits during ‘crucial’ Iran-US talks Grossi arrived in Iran on Wednesday night and met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who now is in Moscow for separate talks likely over the negotiations. On Thursday, Grossi met with Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, then later toured a hall featuring some of Iran's civilian nuclear projects.

“We know that we are in a very crucial, I would say, stage of this important negotiation, so I want to concentrate on the positive,” Grossi told Iranian media. “There is a possibility of a good outcome. Nothing is guaranteed. We need to make sure that we put all of the elements in place ... in order to get to this agreement."

He added: “We know we don't have much time. So this is why I'm here. This is why I'm in contact with the United States as well.”

Asked about Trump's threats to attack Iran, Grossi urged people to “concentrate on our objective.”

“Once we get to our objective, all of these things will evaporate because there will be no reason for concern,” he said.

For his part, Eslami said Iran expected the IAEA to “maintain impartiality and act professionally,” a report from the state-run IRNA news agency said.

Since the nuclear deal’s collapse in 2018 with Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the US from the accord, Iran has abandoned all limits on its program, and enriches uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Surveillance cameras installed by the IAEA have been disrupted, while Iran has barred some of the Vienna-based agency’s most experienced inspectors. Iranian officials also have increasingly threatened that they could pursue atomic weapons, something the West and the IAEA have been worried about for years since Tehran abandoned an organized weapons program in 2003.

Despite tensions between Iran and the agency, its access has not been entirely revoked.