Oil prices dropped on Thursday after Donald Trump suggested his administration was making progress in its indirect talks with Iran to reach a deal to curb the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.
Prices for Brent crude, the international benchmark, slid as much as 3.7 per cent to $63.64 a barrel, after the US president said Washington was in “serious negotiations” with Iran.
“We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said in Doha, the second leg of his tour of the Gulf, according to a report by the White House press pool. “We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal.”
Prices for West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, dropped as much as 4.1 per cent lower at $60.57 a barrel. Both WTI and Brent later recovered some of their losses to trade down roughly 2 per cent.
Trump’s comments came after his envoy Steve Witkoff held a fourth round of talks with Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday ahead of the president’s trip to the region.
Iran’s foreign ministry described the negotiations as “difficult but useful”.
Trump gave no details to back up his comments. But he later posted an NBC article on his Truth Social platform, in which an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Tehran would commit to never developing nuclear weapons.
Ali Shamkhani told NBC in the interview Iran would be willing to get rid of stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, agree to enrich uranium only to lower levels needed for civilian use, and allow international inspectors to supervise the process, in exchange for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions on Iran.
But that seemed to reiterate Iran’s stance that while it is willing to do a deal under certain conditions, including sanctions relief, it would want to retain domestic uranium enrichment.
Experts say securing a deal that is acceptable to both sides will be a lengthy and highly complex process, given deep levels of mistrust and the scale of Iran’s nuclear advances.
Trump later suggested his demands were straightforward, according to the Associated Press, saying: “They can’t have a nuclear weapon. That’s the only thing. It’s very simple.
“It’s not like I have to give you 30 pages worth of details. It is only one sentence. They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
But US officials have given mixed signals on what they would demand of Iran. In recent comments, Witkoff reiterated that the Trump administration wanted the full dismantlement of Tehran’s nuclear programme.
He told Breitbart, a rightwing US news website, on Friday that Iran would have to dismantle its three main nuclear facilities and warned that if talks did not make progress on Sunday, they would not continue and “we’ll have to take a different route”.
That would be a red line for Tehran, which insists that as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, it has a right to enrich uranium domestically.
While Trump has repeatedly said he wants a deal with Iran to resolve the crisis, he has also threatened military action if diplomacy fails and reimposed sanctions on Iran as part of his so-called maximum pressure campaign.
After the last round of talks in Oman, Iranian foreign minister Araghchi said that “there will be no compromise over” Iran’s right to enrich uranium.
He added: “[There is the] possibility that we will agree to some limitations regarding the dimensions, amount and level [of enrichment] for a period to build confidence.
“But the issue of enrichment is non-negotiable, as is the removal of sanctions.”
His comments underlined that Iran could be willing to accept a deal similar to the 2015 accord it signed with the US and other world powers that severely restricted its nuclear activity in return for sanctions relief.
Araghchi on Thursday denied reports in the US media that Washington had submitted a proposal for a nuclear deal. “Up until now, we have not received any proposal or written document,” he said.
Under the terms of the 2015 deal — which took about two years to negotiate — Iran was not allowed to enrich uranium above 3.67 per cent purity and its stockpile of enriched uranium was capped at 300kg.
But after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the accord in 2018 and imposed waves of sanctions on the republic, Iran increased its nuclear activity. For several years it has been enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, which is close to weapons grade.
Trump has used his three-country tour of the Gulf to both rage against Iran and hold open the prospect of a deal.
In a speech in Riyadh on Tuesday, he said that while “Arab states have focused on becoming pillars of regional stability and world commerce, Iran’s leaders have focused on stealing their people’s wealth to fund terror and bloodshed abroad”.
He also said: “If I can make a deal with Iran, I’ll be very happy.
“But if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch . . . then we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, [and] drive Iranian oil exports to zero.”
Iran’s foreign ministry described Trump’s remarks as “deceitful and offensive”, saying they were aimed at “causing division between Iran and its Arab neighbours”.
Additional reporting by Malcolm Moore in London
