While President Trump has repeatedly declared that the United States military attacks on the key enrichment and research sites “totally erased” from the country’s nuclear installation, the intelligence community and other officials within their administration have silently insisted that reaching a diplomatic solution was as critical as ever.
On Tuesday, several officials told ABC News that an initial intelligence report evaluated that the attack on Iranian facilities during the weekend did not completely destroy the country’s nuclear program and probably only delayed it for months.
Following the strikes, European allies have also tried to argue the renewed nuclear diplomacy to Trump administration officials, and a source familiar with conversations says that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has recognized that there is still a need for a diplomatic solution.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatolá Ali Khamenei, speaks after launching his vote during the presidential elections of the second round in Tehran, on July 5, 2024. The former president and republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets supporters at the end of a campaign demonstration in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024.
Atta Kenare/AFP through Getty Images | Charly triballeau/AFP through Getty Images
But publicly, the Trump administration has sent mixed messages about the urgency behind the renewed negotiations with Iran.
“Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon,” the president told reporters on Tuesday. “I think it’s the last thing in your mind at this time.”
While traveling to The Hague for a NATO leaders summit, President Trump published on his social media platform, Truth Social, that China would be allowed to buy oil from Iran.
Trump administration officials did not answer questions about whether the president was indicating that he would raise any sanction against Iran, but analysts predicted that comments could indicate a change towards the lax application of commercial restrictions addressed to the country.
On Tuesday, public officials in Washington also refused to describe the American approach to Iran as “maximum pressure”: the often repeated phrase used by the administration to refer to the sanctions campaign undertaken against the regime after the president’s decision to leave a nuclear agreement of the Obama era with the country in 2018.
President Donald Trump talks to journalists aboard Air Force One on the way to the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 24, 2025.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
The sources say that Trump’s special envoy in the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has been in contact with Iran throughout the conflict with Israel, but so far, US officials have not pressed plans for another face to face.
“A return to diplomacy must begin as soon as possible,” said Dana Stroul, former deputy secretary of Deputy Defense for the Middle East.
“There will never be military operations, whether Israeli operations or American military operations, which could completely eliminate Iran’s program,” said Stroul, who was the senior official of the Pentagon of the Middle East between 2020 and 2023. “And we already know that the storage of enriched uranium was moved.
Rafael Grossi, the general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday that he believes that Iran’s enriched uranium has been transferred, but said that the nuclear control agency currently has no accounting.
When asked about the urgency of restarting nuclear negotiations, the state department spokesman Tammy Bruce declared that the president was “safe” from Iran could not get a nuclear weapon.
“Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “And the understanding is that now they will not have one.”
“The way we advance from here depends on the president of the United States,” Bruce added.
Iran and the United States, in the spring of this year, made five rounds of indirect conversations, which the State Department at that time did not call “negotiations”, related to Tehran’s nuclear program.
If the parties join again, the conversations would depend on the president’s key demand that they will promise not to enrich Uranium in his own soil, said Stroul, who is now the director of research and senior member of the Washington Institute for the Near East policy.
“The question is whether the Trump administration is going to duplicate and demand that I will renounce all internal enrichment and complete the dismantling of its facilities,” he said. “And that presumably would happen under the auspices of the OIEA, so the general director, Rafael Grossi, is asking to enter Tehran as quickly as possible.”
Iran’s public statements have focused on portraying the strength of the regime instead of diplomacy, since the country’s officials have indicated that they will quickly restore their damaged nuclear program.
“The plan is to prevent interruptions in the production and services process,” Iran’s nuclear chief, Mohammad ESMI, said on Tuesday, according to the country’s state media.
Andrea Strickler, deputy director of the non -proliferation and biodefense program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, says that Iran’s vote is the reason that the Trump administration doubles into diplomacy.
“Prohibit Iran from ‘Better to build his nuclear threat again, Washington should seek a negotiated solution with the regime that requires its complete and permanent nuclear dismantling,” he said, emphasizing that an agreement “must deliver all the remaining secret assets such as enriched uranium, centrifuged and facilities.”
President Donald Trump arrives at a formal dinner at the Huis Ten Bosch Palace during the NATO Summit in the Hauge, Netherlands, June 24, 2025.
Be kilppatrick/The Canadian Press through AP
Grossi’s repeated comments that OIEA is unaware of the whereabouts of the uranium has expressed concerns among proliferation experts.
“While Iran’s ability to enrich uranium has been severely degraded, the existence of this material already enriched means that a significant barrier for weapons has already been exceeded,” said Joseph Rodgers, deputy director and partner with the project on nuclear issues in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The longer the location of this highly enriched uranium storage is still unknown, the greater the potential of a proliferation crisis,” Rodgers continued.
Vice President JD Vance indicated in an interview with Jon Karl of ABC News on Sunday that the Trump administration “would work with” Iran to “do something with that fuel”, but it is not clear if any progress has been made on that forehead.
Vance and other American officials, including the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have said that the United States has continued to communicate with Iran through intermediaries. Hegseth said Sunday: “Public and private messages” were being “delivered directly to the Iranians, giving them all the opportunities to come to the table.”
Stroul said that the weekend attacks Iran’s nuclear sites “he marked a decisive change” in Washington’s approach to Iran’s nuclear program, and that “the regime in Tehran has to understand now … that Americans are willing to put a serious skin in the game in an offensive way.”
“Iran is vulnerable diplomatically,” he said, arguing that the United States no longer has a position of “containment” towards Iran and that the president is in a position to “demand the completion of the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Iran nuclear program, and insist that the regime renounces any future desire to enrich Uranium domestically.”
