Khamenei Directive Hardens Tehran’s Negotiating Position
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s directive yesterday that Iran’s near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile “should not leave the country” continues to harden Tehran’s negotiating position into Friday. Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday: “We will get it. We don’t need it, we don’t want it. We’ll probably destroy it after we get it.” He also rejected Iran’s proposed Strait of Hormuz transit fees with “It’s an international waterway.” A senior Iranian source said one technical pathway remains open: in-country dilution of the stockpile under IAEA supervision. The IAEA estimates Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60% at the start of the June 2025 war.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in March that what remained of that stockpile was “mainly” stored in a tunnel complex at the Isfahan nuclear facility, with more than 200 kg there and some at Natanz. Iran has separately argued that some highly enriched uranium is needed for medical purposes and for a Tehran research reactor that runs on relatively small amounts of 20%-enriched uranium — a framing that domestically supports the “dilute and store” technical solution but is publicly inconsistent with the Khamenei “directive” framing. The Pakistani-mediated and now Qatari-supplemented channels are the binding diplomatic variables; the “moments” Trump has been describing for ten days are now narrowing into a concrete next-week test of whether the revised memo can move Tehran or whether Trump triggers the “short-notice” renewed strike.