US Says It Offered to Sell Iran Uranium for Civilian Use, but Tehran Refused

The United States proposed selling uranium to Iran for use in a civilian nuclear programme during earlier negotiations aimed at ending the war between the two countries, according to Washington's ambassador to the United Nations. Mike Waltz said on Sunday that American negotiators had floated the unusual arrangement, only for Tehran to turn it down.

Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, Waltz described the offer as evidence of how far Washington was willing to go to address Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy rather than military means. "Heck, our negotiators even offered to sell them uranium," he said, adding that the proposed arrangement would have resembled the nuclear cooperation model the US has with the United Arab Emirates.

Under that framework, Waltz explained, the UAE runs what he characterised as a peaceful nuclear programme in Iran's own neighbourhood while adhering to international law and inspection regimes. Washington had hoped a similar structure could persuade Tehran to accept strict limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for a guaranteed external supply of reactor fuel.

Waltz said the administration of President Donald Trump was prepared to tolerate a civilian nuclear programme in Iran provided the country met its obligations under international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran is a signatory to the NPT, which commits members not to develop nuclear weapons and to accept safeguards overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The ambassador outlined several possible avenues the White House was willing to explore to prevent Iran from obtaining highly enriched uranium or rebuilding the capacity to produce it. One option, he said, would involve Tehran handing over any such material it already holds — a demand that has repeatedly surfaced in the US-Iran standoff.

The Emirati comparison is significant because Abu Dhabi signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Washington in 2009. Under that arrangement, the UAE pledged not to enrich uranium domestically and not to reprocess spent fuel on its own, effectively forgoing the most sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle. Trump has also said the US and Saudi Arabia reached a civilian nuclear agreement this year, though the details remain unpublished and the president has linked the pact to Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords. Egypt and Turkiye likewise operate civilian nuclear programmes, while Pakistan has an openly declared nuclear arsenal and Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons; neither Pakistan nor Israel is an NPT signatory.

The central dispute between Washington and Tehran has long centred on the fate of Iran's existing uranium stockpile and how to guarantee that any future supply cannot be diverted towards weapons production. Iran has consistently maintained that it has no intention of building a nuclear bomb and that all its enrichment activity is intended for civilian purposes, including electricity generation, medical treatments and scientific research.

Iran is estimated to hold more than 440 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. Weapons-grade material is generally considered to require enrichment to around 90 percent. Enrichment is a technically demanding process that involves isolating the most fissile isotope from natural uranium, and the gap between 60 percent and weapons grade is considerably smaller than the gap between natural uranium and 60 percent.

Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agreed to cap enrichment at 3.67 percent under strict international supervision in return for relief from economic sanctions. Trump withdrew the US from that agreement in 2018, arguing it was too generous to Tehran. Since then, Iran has progressively expanded its enrichment activities and limited cooperation with inspectors.

On September 10, the IAEA expressed concern about Iran's "continued noncompliance" with the NPT. The agency has not had access to key Iranian nuclear facilities since June 2025, when Israel and the US struck sites in the country during a 12-day war. IAEA inspectors rely on such access to verify that nuclear material declared for civilian use is not being diverted.

Iranian officials have rejected the IAEA's findings, saying they were issued under political pressure from Washington and its allies. Tehran insists it has not stopped honouring its treaty obligations but argues it cannot permit inspections until its facilities are safe from further US and Israeli attacks.

Trump has at times threatened to destroy Iran's enriched uranium stockpile or seize it by force. In April, he claimed to have convinced Tehran to hand over its enriched material, which he called "nuclear dust." Iranian officials swiftly dismissed that assertion, saying the stockpile would not leave the country under any circumstances.

The disclosure of the uranium sales offer comes amid renewed tension over the Strait of Hormuz, the vital maritime corridor through which a substantial share of global oil shipments passes. On Saturday, Trump rejected an Iranian plan to reopen the strait within seven days, saying Tehran was desperate for a deal "because they are losing so badly." Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, used a separate Meet the Press interview on Sunday to reiterate that only diplomacy can resolve the conflict.

The apparent collapse of the uranium proposal underscores how far apart the two sides remain on the core issues of enrichment, verification and sanctions relief. For Washington, the offer appears to have been an attempt to test whether Tehran would trade its domestic enrichment capacity for a guaranteed foreign fuel supply. For Tehran, accepting uranium from the country that has bombed its nuclear sites may have been politically untenable, particularly while inspections remain suspended and the war continues.