Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the United States would not lift sanctions on Iran until the country hands over all of its enriched uranium and commits to not working toward obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Earlier in the day, U.S. officials confirmed to the Washington Examiner that American and Iranian officials had agreed to extend the existing ceasefire for 60 days to begin substantive negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, though President Donald Trump himself has yet to formally sign off on the agreement. Past reporting had indicated that Trump was considering loosening sanctions on Iran in exchange for compliance in the peace talks.
Bessent filled in for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave, at Thursday’s White House briefing and repeatedly declined to confirm if such a deal had been reached.
“I’m not going to preview the deal, but I would think that things would go very slowly in terms of that, so we’ll see,” he told reporters.
“Nothing is going to be on the table until we see the Strait of Hormuz open, and the Iranians agree that they have to turn over the highly enriched uranium, and that they can’t have a nuclear program,” he added when asked if sanctions relief was “on the table” in ceasefire talks.
Later in the briefing, when asked directly if reporting from earlier in the day about the 60-day extension was accurate, Bessent responded that “everything depends on what the president wants to do, and President Trump is not going to make a bad deal for the American people.”
US AGREES TO 60-DAY CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT WITH IRAN, BUT TRUMP HAS YET TO GIVE FINAL APPROVAL
“It’s always a mistake to get out ahead of the president, so it is all going to be the president’s decision,” he continued. “We can see that the president very clearly stated his three [pre-requisites]: Open the Strait, highly enriched uranium, no nuclear program.”
You can watch Bessent’s comments in full below.
