Three parties described the deal's nuclear terms in incompatible ways across 23 and 24 May. An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the deal will dismantle Iran's programme and remove all its uranium1. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that Tehran has not agreed to hand over its highly enriched uranium (HEU), the near-weapons-grade material at the centre of the war2. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told state agency IRNA that nuclear issues are not in the current text at all: end the war first, then talk nuclear over two months3.
The stockpile in question is roughly 440 kilograms of 60%-enriched uranium, enough fissile material for several weapons if enriched further. The Axios draft commits Iran only to negotiate enrichment suspension and HEU removal, not to remove it. The moratorium length is still being argued: three sources told Axios at least 12 years, one named 15, and the gap matters, because a 15-year pause pushes any enrichment restart three years further out than a 12-year one.
The gap sits exactly where it has always sat. Iran's Supreme Leader ordered the stockpile kept inside the country last week, reversing the earlier offer to dilute it at home under a decade-long moratorium. The same material is now described three different ways by three parties who all insist the deal is nearly done. Former Israeli intelligence has assessed that the spring strikes left Iran's enrichment capacity largely intact, which is why the 440-odd kilograms still drive every account of the terms.
No independent body can check any of it. The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, has been locked out of Iran's struck sites since the Majlis voted to suspend cooperation on 11 April, and the draft does not commit Tehran to let inspectors back. Any deal therefore arrives without a way to verify the one provision the three parties cannot agree on.
