How will Trump’s plot to seize Iranian nuclear fuel succeed?

President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly considering whether to send ground troops to Iran to recover highly enriched uranium located in the country. However, the administration has shared little information about what forces will be deployed, how the nuclear materials will be recovered, or where the materials will go next.

“People are going to have to go and get it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a congressional news conference earlier this month, referring to the potential operation.

There are some indications that the process is on the horizon. The Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 combat troops to the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. (At the time of writing, the order had not been issued.) The troops will come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint forced entry operations.” On Wednesday, the Iranian government rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said the president was “prepared to unleash hell” on Iran if a peace deal is not reached — a plan some lawmakers have expressed concern about.

Drawing on publicly available intelligence and their own experiences, two experts outlined the possible outlines of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They told WIRED that any version of the ground operation would be incredibly complex and pose a significant risk to the lives of American forces.

“I personally believe that a ground operation using special forces backed by more force is extremely risky and ultimately unfeasible,” Spencer Faragaso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, tells WIRED.

Nuclear ambitions

Experts say any version of the process would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that are not in close proximity to each other. Jonathan Hackett, a former Marine Corps and Defense Intelligence Agency operations specialist, tells WIRED that up to 10 sites could be targeted: research reactors in Isfahan, Arak, and Darkhoven; enrichment facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin; the Sagand and Qin Yazd mines; And Bushehr power station.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely holds the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which may be able to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, although weapons-grade material generally consists of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says the other two enrichment facilities may also contain 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and that the power plant and three research reactors all may contain 20 percent enriched uranium. Varagaso stresses that such supplies deserve careful attention.

Hackett says that eight of the 10 sites – with the exception of Isfahan, which is likely intact underground, and Jabal Axe, a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz – were mostly or partially buried after air strikes last June. Faragaso says that immediately before the war, Iran filled the entrances to the tunnel leading to the Isfahan facility with dirt.

A more risky version of the ground operation would involve US forces actually recovering nuclear materials. Hackett says that this material will be stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas inside “large cement vats.” Faragaso adds that it is unclear how many of these sinks may be broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops will have to bring in excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving huge amounts of dirt to recover them.

According to Hackett, a relatively less risky version of the operation would still require ground forces. However, it will primarily use air strikes to bury nuclear materials within its facilities. Ensuring that nuclear materials are inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragaso says, will entail destroying the entrances to underground facilities, ideally collapsing the roofs of underground facilities.

Lubricate the area

Hackett tells WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran “may be a bluff” to buy time to move troops into place.

Hackett says the operation will likely begin with aerial bombing in the areas surrounding the targeted sites. He says these bombers were likely from the 82nd Airborne Division or from the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “quick reaction” force, and the 31st MEU, the only naval unit continuously deployed overseas in strategic areas, have reportedly been deployed to the Middle East.