MOSCOW — Russia says its offer to take Iran’s enriched uranium “remains on the table,” but only if the warring sides first reach a deal, and no such deal has been announced.
Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko told the RTVI channel that Russia would move the material to its own territory, or help other countries willing to take it, “if the need arises and the conflict parties reach a corresponding deal,” TASS reported. Moscow, he said, proposed moving all of Iran’s enriched uranium out before what he called the US-Israeli aggression began, and “we do not claim that Russia is the sole available destination.”
The sticking point is who can see the stockpile. Borisenko said experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which referred Iran to the UN Security Council in September, lost access to Iranian nuclear facilities after the June 2025 strikes, “in part because some of these facilities were simply destroyed,” and that there are no signs access has returned. What Moscow hears, he said, is that Washington “continues to insist on removing all enriched uranium from Iranian territory.”
The offer is not new, and the leaders have discussed Iran face to face. When Vladimir Putin met President Masoud Pezeshkian in Turkmenbashi on October 8, he told him Iran was making “genuine efforts” to end a conflict “raging in the region through no fault of Iran” and that Russia was ready to do “everything within our power” to help, according to the Kremlin transcript. Pezeshkian said Iran had exchanged proposals with the United States and produced “a revised version of the American initiative,” to be taken up again “through intermediaries” once the text is final. The US, he said, had “repeatedly attacked us in the middle of the talks, but we never walked away from the negotiating table.” The published transcript does not mention uranium.
Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov told reporters after the leaders’ October 9 call that the uranium proposal “remains in effect” and that Donald Trump “did not ignore this remark, welcoming Moscow’s involvement,” according to the Kremlin’s text. That is Moscow’s account of Washington’s reaction; the material reviewed for this report contains no US statement on it.
Tehran’s own message is firmer. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that when Iran says it both fights and negotiates, “we do not mean an endless war or negotiations that have no end,” but fighting “until the enemy is either forced to give in to the demands of our nation, or to admit its defeat,” Tasnim reported, as quoted by TASS. TEH reported on Trump ruling out Iran strikes until November.
None of the statements says who would count the uranium before it leaves Iran, or where it sits now. By Borisenko’s account, the agency that would normally do the counting has not been back.
