Iran says it will continue uranium enrichment despite U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities

Iran's nuclear program led to a direct military confrontation with the U.S. last month. Now, the Islamic Republic is trying to stabilize its nation, its program and its negotiating stance with the West. Nick Schifrin was among a group of reporters who sat down in New York with Iran's top nuclear negotiator.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

  • Geoff Bennett:

    Iran's nuclear program led to direct military confrontation against Iran last month from Israel and the U.S. Now the Islamic Republic is trying to stabilize its nation, its program, and its negotiating stance with the West.

    Our Nick Schifrin was among a group of reporters who sat down in New York this morning with Iran's top nuclear negotiator. And he's here with us now.

    So, Nick, what did he have to say?

  • 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.

  • Geoff Bennett:

    Yes.

Listen to this Segment