Nick Schifrin:
The bottom line is that Iran is maintaining its insistence on enriching uranium domestically, and that is the core of what the president and his administration is trying to prevent.
The briefing this morning in New York, as you said, Geoff, was from Kazem Gharibabadi, one of Iran’s deputy foreign ministers. He laid out a hard line, as expected perhaps, before Iran and Europe meet next at the end of this week for the first time since the war. He said that Iran was — quote — “more determined” than before the war to maintain its right to enrich domestically, that he would not accept a regional consortium of enrichment outside of Iran, as the Trump administration has raised.
He said Iran did not trust the U.S. to resume any kind of direct negotiations. He also said there was no Iranian formal assessment of the impact of those U.S. strikes on the nuclear facilities, even though his boss, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, earlier this week admitted that those strikes — quote — “seriously damaged” the facilities.
But he did say that a technical team from the Iran nuclear watchdog would soon be in Iran to talk about possible future verification.
