WASHINGTON\u2014Iran was using negotiations with the United States to stall for time as it stockpiled materials needed to reach weapons-grade enrichment level, senior administration officials revealed this week. Once President Donald Trump was made aware of the deception, he decided Iran was directly threatening the United States and launched Operation Epic Fury.<\/p>\n
The president shared Tuesday that the negotiations made him believe Iran was going to attack first. \u201cI felt strongly about that,\u201d he emphasized. Asked whether Israel forced the hand of the United States, he responded, \u201cNo, I might have forced their hand. We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s decision stemmed at least in part from Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner\u2019s time at the table with Iranian negotiators, senior administration officials said on a call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon. Iranian negotiators, during several rounds of meetings, came to the Trump team with an agreement that allegedly addressed the needs of the Iranian people over the next decade.<\/p>\n
Because the agreement was needs-based, they asked only for enrichment they might need over the next decade, tying the agreement to a program they have to build out more nuclear facilities. Trump\u2019s negotiators asked if they could take the agreement back to the United States so they could have other nuclear experts from the CIA, War Department, and State Department weigh in. They were refused.<\/p>\n
That was a tell, one senior administration official shared \u2014 one of many throughout the exchange.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nSmoke rises from the area after it was targeted in attacks as a series of explosions are heard in Tehran, Iran on March 01, 2026.\u00a0 (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After reading through the agreement, Witkoff and Kushner were dismayed that the Iranians asked to enrich five times more uranium than was allowed under the Iran nuclear deal. They also discovered a chart at the end of the agreement, on the back of the seventh page, that attested to the amount of enrichment they would need for each new project that they were planning.<\/p>\n
Importantly, it centered on the Tehran Research Reactor.<\/p>\n
As its name suggests, this reactor was purportedly meant for civilian research, unlike the industrial nuclear reactors destroyed in Operation Midnight Hammer.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody all along out there has been under the impression that that\u2019s what it\u2019s been doing,\u201d one senior administration official shared.<\/p>\n
Since Operation Midnight Hammer, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not been able to make inspections in Iran, which senior administration officials said was yet another tell that the Iranians were being deceptive.<\/p>\n
Witkoff and Kushner were in conversations with the IAEA about the Iranians\u2019 agreement, and, unfortunately for Iran, the IAEA knew how much existing fuel Iran had at the Tehran Research Reactor. That number was \u201croughly seven to eight years of what they need to burn on an annual basis,\u201d a senior administration official shared.<\/p>\n
Witkoff and Kushner did some fast math. They realized that the research reactor had not been making any radioisotopes, and that the seven to eight year supply of fuel that Iran had been retaining there was \u201cbeing stockpiled along with all the other stockpiling that had been done at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the claim that they were using a research reactor to do good for the Iranian people was a complete and false pretense,\u201d a senior administration official shared.<\/p>\n
The Trump negotiators recognized that the Iranians are incredibly clever, doing everything internally in Iran to bring that enrichment process to fruition. If the United States had allowed them to continue their work for a year, the administration officials said, Iran could have gone from having 460 kg of weapons-grade material to 1,500 kg of it.<\/p>\n
About 42 kg of 90% enriched uranium is required to make one nuclear warhead, according to the IAEA, and Iran had material enough for 11 bombs at the beginning of these negotiations.<\/p>\n
Within a short period of time, the senior administration official said, they could have had 1,500 kg of weapons-grade material, meaning Iran would have had not just 11 bombs, but up to 50 bombs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is literally the place that we were sailing into,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
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