Trump says US, Iran close to nuclear deal

The U.S. said it was “encouraged" by Iran’s receptiveness to Washington’s approach after the talks on Sunday in Oman. The Iranians, however, stressed that there were important differences between the two sides.

“I think we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this," Trump said at a business event in Doha, Qatar, on Thursday, alluding to military strikes on Iran. “There’s two steps. There’s a very, very nice step, and there’s a violent step, violence like people haven’t seen before."

Ali Shamkhani, a top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told NBC News that Tehran was ready to make concessions to secure a nuclear deal with Washington.

However, he didn’t signal any change in Iran’s most important red line—its two-decade-old insistence that Tehran is able to continue enriching uranium. Trump and other top officials have said Iran shouldn’t have an enrichment program under a new nuclear deal.

Shamkhani said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, scrap its stockpile of highly enriched, near weapons-grade uranium and agree to enrich uranium only at low levels of purity needed for a civilian peaceful program.

All those steps were taken by Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump took the U.S. out of in 2018.

“It’s still possible. If the Americans act as they say, for sure we can have better relations," Shamkhani told the broadcaster, adding, “it can lead to a better situation in the near future."

The last round of negotiations was focused on presenting the U.S. perspective on an agreement, said people briefed on the talks. Iran didn’t reject the U.S. ideas presented. Any final decision on an agreement would need to be taken by Iran’s top leadership, including the supreme leader.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com