ST. PETERSBURG, June 6 -- The offer is still on the table. That was Vladimir Putin's answer Friday when asked whether Russia's proposal to remove enriched uranium from Iran had expired. Speaking at the plenary session of the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia's president said Moscow was not pushing for acceptance - but it was not withdrawing the proposal either.

What made the statement significant was not its headline. Russia has reiterated some version of this offer since Putin first floated it in June 2025. The proposal has been delivered to Donald Trump by phone, carried to Beijing by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and repeated publicly through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov with no takers. What the SPIEF plena...