Iran's Supreme Leader CRITICIZES 'Nonsense' U.S. Nuclear Proposal | TRENDING

0:00 Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kamini is rejecting a Trump administration proposal aimed at blocking Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Kamini called the deal nonsense and said that abandoning its uranium enrichment program is 100% against Iran's interests. The statement comes at a perilous time in the region. Experts say Iran could produce a nuclear bomb in as little as a week. Israel is threatening military strikes to prevent the capability and the Trump administration is pushing for a highstakes deal to avert the conflict. Joining us to discuss Nile Sandage, White House columnist here at the Hill. Hi Nile. So apparently reportedly the deal that's on the table from the US. Uh Iran could continue to enrich lowgrade uranium, but that would be phased out as US and Arab

0:46 countries create a plan to give Iran access to fuel for nuclear power plants. You know, Trump originally had said no enrichment at all. So that seems to be a bit of a backtrack and Iran still rejected the offer. Now what? Well, I think it's a very cloudy picture right now, Drew, because what we know about the American proposal comes from reporting primarily from the New York Times and Axios. And the suggestion seems to be some sort of consortium as you mentioned with other countries perhaps Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates in which there would be some facility that would in some fashion help with whether it was nuclear enrichment or nuclear power. The Iranians argue that no, they must themselves have the

1:33 power to enrich uranium. The president, President Trump, as you say, is against that. So, it's not clear there will be any way to break that impass. And if it's not, then the sanctions stay on Iran, but Iran is going to continue to do whatever it wishes to do, including continuing to enrich Irania. Yeah. What the deal would do with sanctions is a bit unclear. One would assume sanctions relief would be part of the plan, but there's no details yet, but sanctions relief, restrictions on enrichment starting to sound a lot like the deal Obama reached with Iran. Trump called that the worst deal ever negotiated. Yeah, that's right. And this is one of the really interesting points about these negotiations. Are we going to end up with something that is very similar

2:18 to the Obama era agreement from which Trump exited during his first term? President Trump continues to excoriate that agreement. But these reports that we're getting indicate as you say that there is some possibility of Iran being able to continuing continue enriching uranium albeit at a low level. So you know the figure that we've seen in these reports is 3% uh it was approximately that under the Obama deal in terms of uh uranium enrichment. So there is a lot of questions here about whether this is going to be all that different from the agreement that Trump has repeatedly blasted. It seems right now that Trump is really the only thing standing in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran's

3:04 nuclear facilities. How long is the Trump administration going to be able to hold them off? And what would be the ramifications of an Israeli attack on Iran? It's certainly the case that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for years and years been very heatedly against any possibility of Iran getting anywhere close to being able to build a nuclear weapon. And it does appear that the uranium the uranium efforts in Iran are continuing along those tracks. That obviously raises the risk of an Israeli attack. that would surely produce an Iranian response. Iran does remain, you know, a major power in the region even though it's strategic

3:50 strengths have been depleted somewhat in recent times because of allies, Syria weakening and in the case of Hezbollah also weakening. But I think there would be a major confrontation obviously if Israel were to actually bomb Iran and big questions about what would be the US involvement in that. Are we clear on the motivations of the Iranian leadership? You know, Trump says that they could be wealthy. Trump would be their best friend. But isn't really self-preservation the most important thing here? And maybe an Israeli strike that sets back their nuclear program is actually preferable to normalization with the US, which you know the Iranian regime has been calling the great Satan for the last 50 years. I certainly think it's fair to say that self-preservation is a major major interest of the Iranian

4:35 regime. It is also true that the Iranian economy has been badly hit by years of sanctions, by American efforts to try to isolate Iran from the international financial system, oil sales, and things of that nature. So the Iranian leadership does have a motivation to ease those sanctions, but they have no motivation at all to appear to be bending the knee to President Trump. And so I think those two dynamics are in competition with one another to some extent and they may in fact push the chances of a deal further away. About as high a stakes as they can get in geopolitics will continue to follow. Now Sandage, thanks so much for your insight. Thanks Drew. [Music]