Tehran shuts the door on sending its enriched uranium overseas

Iran will not move its enriched nuclear material out of the country under any circumstances, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday. In an interview circulated by the state news agency IRNA, he called the option dead on arrival, saying it was not on the table at all.

Baghaei framed Tehran as the flexible side in the negotiations, pointing out that it trimmed the implementation window for its peace plan to two days, down from seven, as a show of goodwill. He then accused Washington of repeatedly rewriting its demands and shifting the goals of the talks. According to the spokesman, the US administration is muddled over who actually has the authority to represent it, and he tied the conflicting demands to domestic politics and the midterms.

Other Iranian figures dialed up the pressure the same day. Lawmaker Hamidreza Gudarzi argued that acquiring nuclear weapons could deter future attacks and said Tehran should reconsider its nuclear policy after its conflict with the United States and Israel. He claimed Iran had faced explicit nuclear threats during the fighting, specifically targeting the destruction of Pickaxe Mountain.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered his government to end the no war, no peace situation with the United States, insisting Tehran could hold talks with dignity and bring the matter to a close the same way. He cited the conflict's damage to the Iranian economy and living standards. There has been no major escalation since September, though the two sides remain far from a peace deal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against a fresh wave of attacks on Iran, saying he had raised Ankara's concerns directly with US President Donald Trump and told both sides Turkey was ready to help broker talks. Erdogan said he saw signs of renewed tension and cautioned that more fighting would deepen instability with fallout reaching Europe and Asia. He also praised his talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

On the water, an IRIB reporter said the Iranian Navy stopped four oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours, with 11 tankers targeted over ten days. The reporter claimed sailors cleverly disabled the tankers and their navigation systems, adding that the vessels needed the navigation of the terrorist American army to pass through the non-Iranian route.