Vance: Iran must make ‘meaningful’ enrichment reduction to end war

Iran must do something “meaningful” related to its stockpile of enriched uranium to make progress in nuclear negotiations with the U.S., Vice President Vance said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.

Iran’s claim of a right to enrichment is a key sticking point in negotiations over its nuclear program. While Iran says it does not seek to build a nuclear weapon, U.S. officials from both sides of the aisle say the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of stockpiles of highly enriched uranium is only for that purpose.

“If you don’t want a nuclear weapon, then why ​do you need 60% enriched fuel? And if you want to show commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, don’t build highly enriched ⁠fuel. That’s a very basic threshold issue,” Vance said in an exclusive interview with Reuters, while stumping for Republican candidates in Alaska.

“I think if they want to show a commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, they would do something meaningful on their ​enrichment capacity.”

The vice president is a key interlocutor in U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, which are at an impasse over what the U.S. argues is confusion over who holds decisionmaking power in the Islamic Republic and tit-for-tat military strikes trying to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry pushed back on U.S. criticisms of a leadership crisis, and it blamed the Trump administration for failing to negotiate in good faith.

“The problem is actually the opposite: it lies in the contradictory positions and mixed messaging from US officials,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said at a weekly press conference, Reuters reported.

The U.S. launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28 with the stated goal of preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. But Iran has imposed huge costs on the U.S. and global economy by threatening shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a maritime route for about 20 percent of the world’s energy supplies.

Vance told Reuters that the U.S. is willing to strike an agreement where the Iranians commit to not rebuilding their nuclear program, which the Trump administration claims was destroyed in strikes carried out in June 2025.

“You ​know, what the president has said is, you know, look, from the very beginning, we’re willing ​to strike an agreement where the Iranians commit to not rebuilding their nuclear program ⁠and take real steps in order to do that, but it takes two to tango, and we’re not going to trade words for actions,” he said.

“In other words, the United States is not going to do things for mere promise of actions on the Iranian side. We need to trade actions for actions here, and we’ll see what the Iranians do.”