Trump denies offering Iran sanctions relief after Axios report

Donald Trump has demanded that Axios withdraw a report about possible US economic concessions to Iran. In a Truth Social post on 28 September, he said the story was untrue: “I offered them NOTHING!” [1]

Axios’s headline says Trump “offers Iran economic relief for concrete nuclear concessions”. In the article, Barak Ravid attributes a more conditional account to unnamed US officials: Trump was willing to provide sanctions relief and release frozen Iranian funds in exchange for concrete steps on Iran’s nuclear programme. The article says the two sides remained apart on which steps should come first, and Axios added Trump’s denial to its report. [2]

The timing of relief was already in dispute. On 27 September, US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told CNN that Iran wanted access to frozen assets up front, before talks. Rejecting that sequence would not, by itself, rule out relief in exchange for later Iranian steps. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had also pressed for the release of assets and permission to sell oil, as reported by The National. [3] [4]

There is earlier negotiating history, but it is distinct from the September dispute. The White House said in July that the US and Iran had signed a memorandum in June. A published text explicitly labelled a draft envisaged ending sanctions on an agreed schedule as part of a final deal and making frozen or restricted assets available when the memorandum was implemented. [6] [7]