What a U.S. Operation to Get Iran’s Uranium Would Look Like |
Middle East and North Africa
Though the Trump administration’s stated objectives in the Iran war have repeatedly shifted, U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently pointed to preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as a central goal. And now he’s reportedly considering an operation to extract Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in order to accomplish that aim.
Trump has gone back and forth on this issue rapidly, so it’s difficult to determine where he stands. On March 29, for example, Trump suggested that Iran would be destroyed if it didn’t give its HEU to the United States. “They’re going to give us the nuclear dust,” Trump said, in reference to the HEU. “If they don’t do that, they’re not going to have a country,”
Though the Trump administration’s stated objectives in the Iran war have repeatedly shifted, U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently pointed to preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as a central goal. And now he’s reportedly considering an operation to extract Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in order to accomplish that aim.
Trump has gone back and forth on this issue rapidly, so it’s difficult to determine where he stands. On March 29, for example, Trump suggested that Iran would be destroyed if it didn’t give its HEU to the United States. “They’re going to give us the nuclear dust,” Trump said, in reference to the HEU. “If they don’t do that, they’re not going to have a country,”
Then, on March 31, he seemed to signal that the HEU wasn’t high on his list of priorities at the moment, while suggesting that the stockpile is virtually unreachable because it’s “so deeply buried” and “pretty safe” after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June. But the U.S. intelligence community has reportedly determined that Iran could still access the stockpile at its nuclear facility in Isfahan, despite it being under rubble.
Still, Trump did not rule out an HEU operation. “We’ll make a determination,” he said. Trump also signaled that the United States will not end the war until it’s confident that Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons. “When we feel that they are, for a long period of time, put into the stone ages and they won’t be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we’ll leave,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
In an interview with Reuters on April 1, Trump said Iran was now “incapable” of obtaining a nuclear weapon and that its HEU was “so far underground, I don’t care about that.” Trump said the United States will “always be watching by satellite.”
One major reason for Trump’s vacillation on the issue may be how risky an operation to get the HEU would be.
Foreign Policy spoke with former U.S. officials and top military and nuclear experts who expressed grave concerns over the potential dangers of a mission to remove the near-bomb-grade uranium. They warned that it would likely last days and involve a large number of U.S. troops operating deep inside Iran in multiple locations while facing enemy fire.
“It would be very complicated and risky. I have no doubt that the United States could do it. But, to reduce risks, you’d have to put a lot of people on the ground,” said Richard Nephew, a nuclear weapons expert at Columbia University and a former U.S. deputy special envoy for Iran.
Since the war began in late February, U.S. forces have not operated on the ground inside Iran itself. But Trump recently deployed thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, including Marines and Army paratroopers, giving him a range of potential options and raising speculation that a ground operation........