Trump faces his toughest decision regarding the Iran war: Will he deploy US troops to seize uranium?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump faces perhaps the most difficult question in the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put U.S. troops on the ground in Iran to secure about 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could use to build nuclear weapons?

Trump has offered varying reasons for waging war, but he has been consistent in making clear that the primary goal of joining Israel in military action is to ensure that Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon.”

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The president has been more circumspect about how far he is willing to go to implement his pledge to destroy Iran’s weapons program forever, including seizing or destroying nuclear material Iran possesses that is barely suitable for making a nuclear bomb.

Most of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountainous facility that was subjected to a US bombing ordered by Trump last June, which he claimed “destroyed” Tehran’s nuclear programme.

It is a risky and complex project that many nuclear experts say cannot be carried out without deploying a large number of US troops to Iran, a dangerous and politically charged operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to embroil the United States in the kind of long and bloody conflicts in the Middle East that still loom large over America’s psyche.

Meanwhile, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iranian hardliners emerge from the fight, they will be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the United States and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes control of Iran’s enriched uranium even more important. This stockpile could allow Iran to build up to 10 nuclear bombs, if it decides to weaponize its program.

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Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has set the nation on a path that requires putting forces inside Iran to achieve what he called Trump’s disruptive and chaotic goals.

“Some of the goals he continues to espouse cannot be achieved without a physical presence there — securing uranium cannot be achieved without a physical presence,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican allies confirm that there are plans to deal with enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, noted on Wednesday “a number of plans that have been on the table.” He refused to go into details.

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Others acknowledged the complications of deploying forces in Iran.

“No one has given me a brief on how to do this without boots on the ground,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That doesn’t mean you can’t. But no one has ever shown that to me before.”

Scott added that it was not possible to allow the stock to remain: “I think it would be beneficial to get rid of it.”

Trump and his advisers are not transparent about deliberations on uranium

After nearly three weeks of conflict that has left hundreds dead, tested long-standing alliances and brought pain to the global economy, Trump and his senior advisers have not been transparent about their deliberations over Iran’s uranium stockpile.

“I’m not going to talk about that,” Trump said last week when asked about enriched uranium. “But we hit them harder than any other country in history, and we are not finished yet.”

Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, Trump appeared to claim that the strikes had actually neutralized the threat. He added: “They do not have nuclear capabilities.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week that the administration saw no point in telegraphing “what we’re willing to do or how far we’re willing to go” while stressing that “we have options, absolutely.”

Experts say it’s possible, but it won’t be easy

Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, said seizing or destroying enriched uranium is certainly possible, if the president decides to go that route.

American and Israeli forces have made great strides toward creating the conditions—specifically, achieving complete air superiority—that would allow Special Operations Forces operators, trained in detonating centrifuges and handling nuclear materials, to carry out such an operation.

To be sure, the efforts of forces on the ground are expected to be far more complex than recent high-profile and lightning-fast deployments, such as the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January or the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Goldberg said. The potential need to remove debris to access the enriched uranium canisters adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment.

“But if you actually own the airspace, and you can get close air support and drones and everything else in the sky for a very wide perimeter, you should be able to do a lot,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank in Washington.

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The assumption is that a lot of enriched uranium is still present at the three Iranian nuclear sites that the United States bombed last year, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week.

“Our impression is that it has not been moved,” Grossi said, adding that the bulk of the material is under the rubble in the Iranian Isfahan facility, while smaller quantities are in the Natanz and Fordow facilities, which were destroyed in US strikes last year.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in a Sunday appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Iran had offered to dilute its stockpile of enriched uranium during his talks with Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which failed to reach an agreement shortly before the United States and Israel began the bombing.

Testifying before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, said in her prepared remarks that US attacks on Iran had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and buried facilities underground.

Gabbard said the United States is watching whether Iran’s leaders will try to restart its nuclear program, but she said they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capabilities. She added that the religious authority supervising the Iranian government has deteriorated due to the Israeli strikes on its leadership, but it remains intact.

Efforts to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely require more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site, and would take some time to complete, said Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute.

On the other hand, inaction to secure enriched uranium also carries risks. If Iran’s hardliners remain in power, and with enrichment material available, they will now have a greater incentive to build a nuclear weapon.

“Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place,” Buck said. “Throughout it, he had maximum goals, but wanted to keep the effort to a minimum in order to keep costs low.”

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Matthew Lee and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.