US President Donald Trump has rejected an offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to transfer Iranian enriched uranium to Russia as part of a deal to end the war the US and Israel are waging against Tehran, the Axios website reported today, Reuters reported.
Putin made the proposal in a phone call with Trump this week, and the Republican president rejected it, the report added, citing sources.
Securing Iran's 450 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which can be converted to a weapons-grade level in a matter of weeks and is enough for more than ten nuclear bombs, is one of the key war goals of the US and Israel, Axios writes.
The media outlet states that in theory, Putin's offer could help enable the removal of Iran's nuclear stockpiles without the presence of American or Israeli troops on the ground.
Russia is already a nuclear power and previously stored Iranian low-enriched uranium under the 2015 nuclear deal, making it one of the few countries with the technical capacity to accept the material.
Putin, in a conversation with Trump on Monday, presented several ideas for ending the war between the US and Iran. The uranium proposal was one of them.
"This is not the first time that this has been offered. It has not been accepted. The US position is that we need to see that the uranium is secured," one US official told Axios.
Russia made similar proposals during the US-Iran nuclear talks last May - before the US and Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in June - as well as in the weeks before the start of the current war.
In the last round of talks before the war, Iran rejected the idea of a transfer and proposed that the uranium be diluted inside its facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
It is unclear whether Iran would accept the proposal now, according to Axios.
"The president talks to everyone - Xi, Putin, the Europeans - and he's always ready to make a deal. But it has to be a good deal. The president doesn't make bad deals," the US official said.
The US and Israel have discussed the possibility of sending special forces to Iran to secure nuclear supplies in a later phase of the war, Axios reported earlier.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a press conference today that the US "has a range of options" to take control of Iran's highly enriched uranium.
Hegseth said one option was for Iran to voluntarily hand over the stockpiles, which the US would "welcome."
"They were not prepared to do that in the negotiations. I would never tell this group or the world what we are prepared to do or how far we are prepared to go, but, certainly, we have options," he added.
In an interview with Fox News Radio, Trump indicated that securing highly enriched uranium is not a top priority right now.
"We're not focused on that, but at some point we might be," he said.
Trump said for the first time that Russia was helping Iran in the war, after days of reports that Moscow was providing intelligence to target US forces.
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