Nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium sitting inside Iran has placed a stark dilemma before President Donald Trump: negotiate its removal or send in the military to take it. According to US officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal, the president is actively weighing the latter – a mission that would almost certainly keep American forces on Iranian soil for days, possibly longer.
Officials say Trump is measuring the danger to US troops against the potential to permanently close Iran's path to a nuclear weapon – his stated strategic priority – and has so far remained broadly willing to consider the operation.
Privately, Trump has been unambiguous with political allies that Iran cannot be allowed to retain the material, according to a person familiar with the president's thinking who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. His advisers have been directed to press Tehran to surrender the uranium as a ceasefire condition; a military seizure awaits if those demands go unmet.
Three countries – Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt – have functioned as intermediaries between Washington and Tehran, though direct negotiations between the parties have not yet begun.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered this on behalf of the administration: "It's the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the president has made a decision," while the Pentagon and US Central Command declined all comment.
Trump told reporters Sunday evening that non-compliance would cost Iran everything – "they're not going to have a country" – and was equally direct about the uranium's fate: "They're going to give us the nuclear dust."
The uranium at issue dates to before last June's joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. At that point, Tehran held an estimated 882-plus pounds of 60%-enriched uranium and close to 441 pounds of 20% fissile material, which is easily upgradable to 90%-weapons-grade.
According to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi, most of that material is likely held at Isfahan – in an underground tunnel within the nuclear complex – and at Natanz. Iran retains the centrifuge capacity and technical expertise to reconstitute an underground enrichment program, experts noted.
According to a person close to the discussions who spoke to The Wall Street Journal, the president and a number of allies believe a tightly focused extraction could be executed without meaningfully extending the conflict, and remain confident the war could conclude by mid-April.
However, no one around the president is dismissing the risks, according to the report. Former US military officers and security analysts describe a forced uranium seizure as arguably the most operationally demanding mission Trump could authorize – one likely to draw Iranian retaliation and extend the war well past the publicly stated four-to-six week horizon.
American aircraft would have to penetrate Iranian air defenses amid surface-to-air missile and drone fire before reaching the sites. Combat forces arriving on the ground would then need to hold secure perimeters while engineers with heavy excavation machinery sifted through debris, sweeping for mines and booby traps.
The uranium itself – believed to be held in 40 to 50 purpose-built cylinders roughly the size of scuba tanks – would have to be transferred into accident-rated transport casks by a specially trained special operations team experienced in the removal of radioactive material. That cargo could fill several trucks, said Richard Nephew, a Columbia University senior research scholar and former US nuclear negotiator with Iran. A temporary airfield would likely need to be improvised to get it out, and the full operation could run for a week.
Trump has not publicly committed to the retrieval mission, but on Saturday pointed his social media followers toward a Mark Levin Fox News broadcast in which the commentator pressed for Trump "to get the uranium." The administration is meanwhile pursuing a diplomatic track, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating last week that US objectives can be achieved without ground forces.
With strikes against Iran continuing, Trump is being briefed on extraction logistics, officials told The Wall Street Journal. Contingency deployments – quick-reaction Marine units and 82nd Airborne paratroopers – are being staged in the region to seize strategic points, including an island off Iran's southern coast, if ordered. The Pentagon, already well-equipped in the theater, is considering an additional 10,000 ground troops to widen the president's options, US officials said.
