Diplomatic Push: US-Iran Agreement, Uranium, and the Middle East

Donald Trump was pushing these Middle Eastern leaders, trying to get them on board for some diplomatic push tied to that emerging US-Iran aGreement. Axios reported it. Negotiations about ending the Iran war and getting the Strait of Hormuz open were really gaining traction. Things were moving.

He held a phone call, Saturday. With a bunch of leaders. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain. All of them. The whole group to talk about the deal with Iran.

And the reaction? It wasn't smooth.

Even the UAE, President Mohammed bin Zayed, backed the effort. That’s interesting. Because the UAE had been pretty hawkish about the Iran conflict before. They weren't exactly lining up perfectly, you know?

One US official, quoted in the report, said something kind of resigned. “They all said, ‘We are with you on this deal. And if it doesn’t work, we will be with you too.’” Just that. A kind of reluctant promise.

Then there was the part about the Abraham Accords . Trump brought it up. He told these leaders that once the war with Iran was over, he expected countries that weren't part of the Accords, or didn't have peace deals with Israel, to just normalize relations with the Jewish state.

It sounded a bit ambitious. A massive leap.

But some of the leaders, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan—countries that don't have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, for instance—they were surprised by that request. Silence on the line, apparently. One US official mentioned there was silence before Trump joked and asked if they were still actually on the call. That kind of awkwardness.

Trump then said his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, would follow up on that normalization stuff in the coming weeks. A promise, maybe.

He even floated the idea that Iran itself might one day join the Abraham Accords . Highly unlikely, of course. Tehran has always been hostile toward Israel. Longstanding refusal to recognize them. That just doesn't fit.

The actual deal itself, the emerging understanding, that’s where things got really technical, and frankly, messy.

The Associated Press reported that this aGreement would involve Iran giving up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That’s the core.

Two regional officials they cited said this whole thing would be figured out over a proposed sixty-day negotiation period. Sixty days. Just to sort it out.

And what about the uranium? Some of it could get diluted. The rest of the stockpile might get moved somewhere else. Russia, they said, offered to take custody of the material. A third country. Russia.

There was a warning attached to this. A US official told the AP there would be no sanctions relief if Iran failed to surrender that uranium. That’s a heavy line.

Iran currently holds 440.9 kilograms of uranium, enriched up to sixty percent purity. Figures from the International Atomic Energy Agency. That level. It’s close. Technically, a short step away from weapons-grade enrichment. That’s the danger lurking underneath everything.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz . That was central to all of this. The proposed aGreement also aimed to gradually reopen that strait. Parallel to the US ending its blockade on Iranian ports.

That closure—it was bad. After the US and Israel bombed Iran on February 28th, the whole world felt the energy crisis. Oil and gas prices shot up. Sharp increases.

But experts, the AP quoted them, they think even if the waterway reopens, it could take weeks, maybe months, for shipping routes and prices to settle down. It’s not instant magic.

And the sanctions? That was another layer. The US might allow Iran to resume oil sales through sanctions waivers, but that, along with the release of frozen Iranian funds, would have to wait for that sixty-day implementation period.

Saudi Arabia’s position, though, remains incredibly complex. It’s not simple.

Trump had asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to join the Abraham Accords back in November. But the Saudi leader resisted. The exchange reportedly got tense.

The situation in the region was shifting. The Iran war, plus the tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, pushed Riyadh toward a more skeptical view about Israel’s current government. That kind of shift, you can feel it.

Saudi officials still insist something. They want Israel to commit to an “irreversible and time-bound” path toward a Palestinian state before any real normalization can happen. A very specific demand.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said something different, though. He and Trump reportedly aGreed that any final deal with Iran “must eliminate the nuclear danger.” But they also insisted on preserving Israel’s right to defend itself. Against threats. Including from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It’s all tangled up. A lot of things happening at once. The uranium, the shipping lanes, the geopolitical maneuvering. It all connects. But it’s all moving at a pace that feels uneven. You just watch.