The letter arrived Iran sent its response to the US peace
proposal through Pakistan's mediation channel on Sunday
morning. Trump reviewed it and called it
totally unacceptable and then told Truth Social he is watching
the uranium. The Wall Street Journal reported
that Iran offered to transfer some of its highly enriched
uranium to a third country, not the United States, but refused
to dismantle its nuclear facilities.
Iran agreed to halt enrichment, but not for 20 years.
Trump separately said the US has Iran's uranium stockpiles very
well surveilled and warned that anyone who gets near them will
be destroyed. Netanyahu said on CBS 60 Minutes
there is work to be done in Iran and that Trump agreed with him
on the importance of physically removing Iran's stockpile of
highly enriched uranium. Iran's President Posseshkian
said Iran will never bow its head before the enemy.
Oil rose more than 3 1/2% to $104.00 a barrel, and the war
entered its 73rd day, with Trump's rejection and Iran's
partial offer both on the table simultaneously, the uranium
stockpile under American surveillance and no defined path
to a ceasefire ending. It is Monday, May 11th, 2026,
day 73 of Operation Epic Fury. The letter arrived and was
rejected. The nuclear question remains the
wall Iran's offer on uranium moves partially toward
Washington but stops short of what the US says it requires.
And the distance between Iran's third country and America's full
physical removal is the specific distance this conflict has yet
to close. This is episode 73 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran War podcast. Follow on Spotify and Apple
Podcast to stay with this story as it develops.
Let's get into it. Begin with the response and what
it contains. Because after five days of
waiting, the letter's arrival defines the specific remaining
gap between the two sides with precision no public statement
had previously achieved. And that gap is smaller than the
public rhetoric of both governments has suggested, and
larger than any single negotiating session has yet been
able to close. Iran's official news agency IRNA
confirmed on Sunday afternoon that Tehran had sent its
response to the US peace proposal to Pakistani mediators,
who passed it on to the Trump administration's
representatives. The response was the document
both governments have been publicly expecting since
Wednesday's 48 hour window announcement.
Erna described the current phase of negotiations as focusing
exclusively on the cessation of hostilities in the region,
language consistent with Iran's sustained public position that
nuclear questions are separate from the immediate war ending
arrangement. Iran's public framing of the
response is a war ending document.
The Wall Street Journal reporting describes a document
that includes nuclear concessions, however partial.
The gap between those characterizations reflects the
same strategic ambiguity about what exactly Iran has and has
not conceded in the document it sent.
The Wall Street Journal reported the specific nuclear terms in
Iran's response on Sunday afternoon, based on sources with
knowledge of the documents contents.
Iran offered to transfer some of its stockpile of highly enriched
uranium to a third country. It agreed to halt uranium
enrichment. It refused to dismantle its
nuclear facilities, and the halt to enrichment would not be for
20 years, the duration the United States has demanded.
Tehran is also prepared to agree to a shorter moratorium, the
Wall Street Journal reported, without specifying the duration
offered. Those four elements together
define Iran's nuclear concession package as it currently stands,
partial uranium transfer to a third party, an enrichment halt
of uncertain duration, nuclear facilities intact, and a
destination other than the United States for the transfer
material. Every one of those elements
falls short of what Washington described as its requirements in
the framework document. The gap on uranium transfer is
the most consequential. the US wants all of Iran's
approximately 440kg of highly enriched uranium removed from
Iranian territory. Iran is offering some, not all,
of that material transferred to a third country.
The precise fraction Iran is offering to transfer has not
been publicly specified. A partial transfer that leaves a
significant remaining quantity of 60% enriched uranium on
Iranian soil is, from Washington's nuclear
verification perspective, an incomplete solution.
The material remaining in Iran could be enriched to 90% weapons
grade in a matter of weeks using Iran's remaining centrifuge
infrastructure if the moratorium ends, is broken, or if the
agreement collapses. David Albright's warning from
earlier this week that any significant part of the
stockpile remaining in Iran constitutes a bad deal applies
directly to Iran's partial transfer offer.
The destination gap is simultaneously symbolic and
deeply strategic. the US wants the material moved to the United
States. We're at minimum to AUS
supervised facility where American officials can verify it
is not being returned to Iran. Iran wants to transfer it to a
third country, which almost certainly means Russia, given
that Putin made the uranium custody offer in early April and
Arachi flew to Saint Petersburg specifically to discuss it.
Russia as custodian of Iran's enriched uranium is a
fundamentally different strategic outcome from the
United States as custodian for both sides.
Russian custody means the material is accessible to a
country that has been providing Iran with intelligence on U.S.
military movements and that pledge to do everything that
serves Iran's interests. American custody means the
material is physically in US hands and cannot be returned to
Iran without explicit US cooperation.
The destination gap is not a procedural detail.
It is the entire geopolitical question of who controls Iran's
nuclear future. The gap on duration remains
significant, but is at least structurally within a negotiable
range. Iran has now confirmed it is
willing to halt enrichment for some defined period, a
meaningful shift from its early position that the nuclear
program is non negotiable. the US wants 20 years.
Iran's initial position was five years.
The 12 to 15 year landing zone that Axios described earlier
this week as the likely outcome is still positioned between
Iran's current offer and the US demand.
That specific gap, unlike the facility dismantlement gap,
could in theory be bridged through a series of revised
proposals. Trump described Iran's response
as totally unacceptable. His subsequent statement added a
new element to the nuclear standoff that had not been
previously disclosed publicly, he said.
We have that very well surveilled.
If anybody got near the place, we will know about it, and we
will destroy anyone who approaches that statement.
Is Trump publicly asserting that the United States has
intelligence infrastructure, surveillance assets, almost
certainly a combination of satellite imagery, signals
intelligence and possibly human intelligence monitoring the
location of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles in real time
throughout the ceasefire and the diplomatic process.
He is saying that the US knows where the uranium is, who is
approaching it, and what is happening to it at any given
moment. And he is warning explicitly and
on the record that any attempt to move it, enrich it further,
secure it outside of AUS approved arrangement, or
transfer it to a non agreed destination will be treated as a
triggering event for an immediate military response.
That assertion transforms the nuclear standoff from a purely
diplomatic question into one with an immediate military
dimension. The uranium is not merely the
subject of negotiations, according to Trump, it is under
active American military surveillance in any party,
Iranian, Russian or otherwise, that approaches it in a manner
inconsistent with what the US has agreed to will face
destruction. That warning is directed
simultaneously at Iran, at Russia, and at any other party
that might be considering taking custody of the material on
Iran's behalf before or outside of an agreed framework.
It is also Trump's most explicit assertion to date that the US
regards itself as having unilateral military authority
over what happens to Iran's enriched uranium.
Regardless of whether a deal is signed, is rejected, or is still
being negotiated. The uranium's fate, in Trump's
telling, is effectively already under American control through
surveillance and the threat of force.
Iran's proposal to transfer some of it to a third country is in
Trump surveillance, framing a proposal the US can accept or
can destroy the moment any party attempts to implement it outside
of Washington's approved terms. Netanyahu appeared on CBS 60
Minutes in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
He said there is work to be done in Iran, and he offered the most
direct Israeli assessment of the current state of the US Iran
negotiations from outside the administration.
He said Iran has not given up its enriched uranium, it has not
dismantled its nuclear sites, it has not stopped supporting its
regional proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, and it has not
agreed to any limits on its ballistic missile program.
In other words, Netanyahu is saying that despite 73 days of
war ceasefire, Islamabad talks, proposal exchanges and a
framework document, nothing of substances change about Iran's
nuclear and military position. From Israel's strategic
perspective, Iran still has the uranium, the centrifuges still
exist, the proxies still operate, the missiles are still
there. The wars core objectives as
Israel defines them have not been achieved.
Netanyahu said that Trump agreed with him on the importance of
removing Tehran stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
He described his preferred outcome as the US physically
going in and taking the uranium out.
That formulation physically going in is not a diplomatic
transfer arrangement, it is a military operation.
Netanyahu is describing a scenario in which American
forces physically enter Iran's nuclear facilities, remove the
enriched uranium, and take it out of the country under
American custody, the most maximalist version of the
stockpile removal demand, and the most interventionist outcome
in the framework of any current US Iran negotiating scenario.
Whether Trump has agreed to that as the preferred outcome, or
whether Netanyahu's characterization reflects a
stated Trump preference that the administration's diplomatic team
is not currently pursuing, cannot be verified from the CBS
interview alone. What Netanyahu's statement
definitively confirms is that Israel's definition of a
satisfactory war outcome includes the physical removal of
Iran's nuclear material by U.S. forces, not its diplomatic
transfer to Russia, which is Israel's most probable least
acceptable outcome. Iran's partial transfer to
Russia offer is, from Netanyahu's perspective, the
opposite of what is required. U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations Mike Walt said on Fox News Sunday that the US has laid
out a very clear red line in its latest proposal.
He said President Trump has been clear.
They will never have a nuclear weapon and they cannot hold the
world's economies hostage. That formulation, clear red
line, never world's economies, is Waltz describing the US
nuclear floor in its most publicly unambiguous term since
Vance stated the same position at the first Islamabad session.
It does not describe what comes next after the totally
unacceptable rejection. It does not specify A revised
deadline. It does not lay out a counter
proposal. It reasserts the core position
while leaving open the question of whether the response is
diplomatic or military. Whether the administration
returns the document to Pakistan with specific revisions
adjusting the enrichment duration downward and the
uranium destination toward US custody while maintaining the
core nuclear constraint, or whether it uses the rejection as
the authorization for a new military phase is a decision
that defines the next stage of the war.
Iran's President Mehsud Posseshkian posted on X on
Sunday that Iran will never bow its head before the enemy.
He wrote if talk of dialogue or negotiation arises, it does not
mean surrender or retreat. That post is Iran's civilian
elected leader, maintaining the defiance position that has
characterized every Iranian public statement throughout the
week of framework deliberation. Posseshkian is elected and his
statements carry domestic political weight, but he does
not hold strategic decision making authority in the Islamic
Republic's governing structure. That authority belongs to
Common, a who an unnamed official confirmed on Friday is
incomplete health and will eventually appear publicly, who
receive Iran's proposal on its contents before Sunday's
submission and whose specific authorization of the partial
uranium transfer offer and the shorter than 20 year enrichment
halt has not been publicly confirmed or commented on.
Iran's response also contains the additional demands that
Iran's negotiating team has been attaching to every proposal
since the first Islamabad round, according to Tiznim news agency
and Arab diplomatic sources cited by multiple outle outlets.
The demands include Iran's oil exempted from U.S. sanctions
within 30 days of any deal, the full lifting of the US naval
blockade of Iranian ports, a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of
any Iran US settlement, recognition of Iranian
sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and war reparations for
damage caused by Operation Epic Fury and the Israeli parallel
operation. Those demands sit in two
distinct categories that determine how negotiable they
are. The first category is
economically negotiable. Sanctions relief and blockade
lifting are explicitly offered in the US framework document,
and the timing, sequencing and conditions under which they
apply are legitimate negotiating questions rather than structural
incompatibilities. The 30 day oil exemption demand
is Iran trying to front load the economic relief relative to the
nuclear concessions, which is the sequencing dispute that has
defined the entire process. The second category is
structurally more problematic. Horma's sovereignty recognition
that Iran has the legal right to control who transits the
waterway directly contradicts the International Maritime law
position the United States and 30 other countries have
maintained throughout this conflict.
War reparations are something the United States has never paid
to any country it has bombed, and Lebanon as part of the Iran
US settlement is the linkage that Israel and the US agreed to
exclude on April 8th. These are not merely negotiating
positions that can be adjusted through revised wording.
They represent Iran score political demands, the
conditions on which the Islamic Republic civilian diplomatic
track would need to justify the nuclear concessions to its IRGC
hardline establishment. Whether they are the opening bit
of a negotiation that will ultimately drop them or genuine
red lines that make the deal structurally impossible is the
question the counter proposal process must answer.
The ceasefire continued to strain on Sunday on multiple
fronts. The UAE said its air defenses
dealt with two Iranian drones that have been launched from
Iran. Kuwait reported hostile drones
entering its airspace. Israeli strikes continued in
southern Lebanon. Iran's Internet blackout, which
has been enforced since the war began, entered its third month
with no indication from the Iranian government of when or
whether it will end. Pakistan's Ambassador to Russia,
Faisal Nayez Termizy confirmed in a statement to task that
talks have not reached a deadlock and continue with
Islamabad acting as mediator. That confirmation, not a
deadlock continuing, is Pakistan publicly maintaining the
channels operative status even after Trump called the response
totally unacceptable. Oil processed the mutual
rejection of Sunday's proposals by rising more than 3 1/2% to
approximately $104.00 per barrel, a level not seen since
the war's most acute phase in late April.
That price movement reflects the markets updated probability
assessment of a near term deal following Trump's totally
unacceptable rejection. The 3 1/2% rise is a meaningful
market signal. It says that the combination of
Iran's partial offer and Trump's rejection has, from the market's
perspective, reduced rather than increase the probability of an
imminent deal. But it does not price in a
return to full scale bombing or the complete collapse of the
ceasefire. If the market believed the
totally unacceptable rejection was the last communication
before a military escalation, oil would be considerably higher
than $104. The market is pricing the
rejection as a new round of a process that has produced
rejected proposals before and is likely to produce another cycle.
That interpretation is supported by Pakistan's ambassador to
Russia confirming a task on Sunday that talks have not
reached a deadlock and continue with Islamabad acting as
mediator. That statement, made after Trump
called Iran's response totally unacceptable, is Pakistan
explicitly maintaining the channel's operative status and
confirming that the rejection does not end the diplomatic
process. The next communication through
Pakistan, whether AUS counterproposal that revises the
uranium destination, adjust the duration downward from 20 years
or modifies the facility dismantlement requirement, or a
new Iranian offer that moves closer to US custody and a
longer moratorium, is the operative question to market.
And the world is waiting to hear.
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi was
granted bail and transferred to a hospital in Tehran on Sunday,
according to a statement from her family's foundation, the
Nargis Foundation. Mohammadi has been imprisoned
for a human rights activism. She is serving a 10 year
sentence and is the most internationally prominent of
Iran's imprisoned dissidents, having been awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2023. Her release on bail for a
medical furlough is a small and specific development.
It does not represent a systemic liberalization of Iran's
treatment of political prisoners or a change in the Islamic
Republic's approach to internal dissent.
But it is an action by the Iranian government during the
ceasefire and the diplomatic period that takes place
precisely when Iran's international credibility and
its image outside the country have value as a negotiating
asset. It's timing, on the same day
Iran submitted its peace proposal through Pakistan is
unlikely to be coincidental. Is the kind of small, visible,
internationally resonant gesture that Iran's civilian diplomatic
track can produce at moments when the government needs to
signal flexibility without making explicit concessions on
the nuclear question. If this podcast is helping you
make sense of what's happening, take 2 seconds to leave a five
star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
It makes a huge difference to how many people find the show
and if you want the deeper breakdown of what's really going
on and where this is heading, you can unlock the premium
episodes directly in Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
This has been episode 73 of Epic Fury, the US Iran war podcast.
The letter arrived. Iran offered partial uranium to
a third country, not the US, refused to dismantle facilities,
agreed to enrichment halt, but not 20 years Trump.
Totally unacceptable. He is watching the stockpile.
Netanyahu work to be done. Posseshkian will not bow.
Pakistan confirms talks continue, oil to 104.
The gap is defined. The war is not over.
We will be back very soon.