President Donald Trump said Thursday the United States does not need to seize Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, even as he said Washington still has its eye on it. Asked by anchor Sean Hannity whether the U.S. was considering taking the material by force or trying to entomb it, Trump said a ground operation to extract the stockpile would take a week and a half.
“I don’t think it’s necessary [to get the uranium], except from a public relations standpoint,” Trump said. “I think it’s important for the fake news that we get it,” he added, later saying, “I’m the one that said we’re going to get it, and we’re going to get it. We have our eye on it.”
The remarks mark a shift in tone from Trump’s earlier insistence that handover of Iran’s uranium stockpile was a core demand for resolving the war. He now appears to be suggesting that turning over the stockpile is not a condition that must be met before the conflict can end.
Iran’s stockpile is described as nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, just below the level needed for weapons. Experts estimate that, if used for arms, the material could be enough for about 10 to 12 nuclear bombs. Trump’s comments came against a backdrop of U.S. intelligence assessments saying the joint U.S.-Israeli bombardment campaign failed to set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
That makes the uranium a political and strategic flashpoint at the center of the trump iran news cycle, but Trump’s own words pointed to a more complicated reality: the material remains in view, yet not necessarily at the top of his list of demands. What happens next will depend on whether the White House treats the stockpile as a bargaining chip, a military target or, as Trump suggested, mostly a matter of optics.
