Trump’s Middle East envoy reveals what led to breakdown in Iran talks before Operation Epic Fury
U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff described what he said were early threats and demands from Iran during an interview on "Hannity" Tuesday, as U.S. negotiators and Iranian counterparts explored whether a deal could be reached before talks collapsed — a breakdown that preceded the launch of Operation Epic Fury.
Witkoff offered a behind-the-scenes account of the opening exchanges in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations. He said Iranian representatives opened by asserting an "inalienable right to enrich" nuclear fuel — a stance the U.S. delegation opposed by insisting that Iran should not enrich uranium at all.
Witkoff said Iranian negotiators declared they controlled roughly 460 kilograms of enriched uranium to about 60% and that this material could potentially be further enriched toward weapons-grade levels in about a week to 10 days.
He explained that enrichment beyond about 20% serves no civilian purpose and is associated with weaponization.
Iran’s negotiators told U.S. officials that the United States would not obtain through diplomacy what it could not achieve militarily — a remark he linked to June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, which targeted Iranian nuclear facilities.
Witkoff maintained that the country's three main enrichment and conversion centers were, in fact, destroyed, but Tehran has not publicly acknowledged such destruction.
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"It was very, very clear to us that with that amount of weapons-grade material, that they had every intention of seeking a weapon. It would not be logical to us to think anything else," he said.
The United States even offered to help Iran convert its nuclear endeavors to a civil, non-enrichment program, and, "as a little extra, we suggested to them that we would provide fuel to them for free for a long period of time," said Witkoff.
But Iran called the offer "an assault on their dignity," he said, emphasizing that he viewed the stance as "subterfuge" to obscure their advance toward a nuclear weapon.
"That's how they felt that they would have increased power in the Mideast, and it would have changed the dynamic in the Mideast, and we couldn't allow it," he said.
"A second North Korea in the Mideast would have been untenable, and everybody on our foreign policy team knew it, and the president was very clear-minded about it."
Operation Epic Fury was launched by President Donald Trump as a U.S. and Israeli joint military campaign on February 28, 2026, with the goal being to destroy Iranian missile infrastructure, naval assets and nuclear capabilities to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.