Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi posted on X this morning that he was “dismayed” by the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. “Active negotiations have yet again been undermined. Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. ... This is not your war,” he added.
Al Busaidi had been the mediator in the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in recent weeks. He not only knew the truth of what Iran had offered to reach some peaceful resolution, but he had revealed on U.S. national television the night before that Iran had agreed to give up its enriched uranium stockpiles during those negotiations with the United States.
Speaking to CBS on Feb. 27, Al Busaidi reported that Iran had agreed on “zero stockpiling” of enriched uranium, including down-blending existing stockpiles to the lowest level and converting them into irreversible fuel under full IAEA verification. He emphasized that a deal in his view was in reach and that agreements had been reached that had never been reached before.
“The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement. This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama’s time.
“This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don’t enrich. And I think this is really something that has been missed a lot by the media, and I want to clarify that from the standpoint of a mediator.”
