US President Donald Trump is considering a military operation to remove nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US officials.
While the decision has not yet been made, Trump remains open to the idea, US officials told WSJ. However, he is taking into account the danger such an operation could pose to US troops.
According to WSJ, Trump and some of his allies have agreed privately that it would be possible to seize the uranium in a targeted operation and that such an operation would not significantly extend the timeline of the war.
However, multiple former US military officers and experts have warned that any operation to extract the uranium would have to be extremely complex and would carry significant risk.
In an interview with CBS earlier this month, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed doubt about the feasibility of such an operation.
Difficulties in moving uranium
The uranium is stored in gaseous form within cylinders, which are very difficult to handle and transport, according to Grossi.
Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former nuclear negotiator with Iran, told WSJ that, to safely transport the cylinders, they would need to be placed in transport casks and could fill several trucks.
Additionally, decoy cylinders, booby traps, and mines could pose additional danger to engineers extracting the uranium.
Engineers would also need specialized equipment, all of which would need to be flown in, likely under fire, and then perimeters would need to be established around the nuclear site and a makeshift airfield set up, WSJ wrote.
Trump has told his advisers to urge Iran to agree to surrender the uranium freely, WSJ cited a person familiar with Trump’s position as saying. The US has been negotiating with Iran through mediators in the past week, and Trump has been clear that any resolution to the conflict must end without the possibility of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon.
The US has extracted enriched uranium from foreign countries before. In 1994, the US executed Project Sapphire, in which uranium was moved from Kazakhstan, and in 1998, the US and the UK cooperated in an operation to remove highly enriched uranium from a reactor near the Georgian capital and transport it to a nuclear complex in Scotland.
Both operations were conducted as peaceful transfers.
Hegseth: We have options
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, when asked about the US’s plans regarding the uranium, said that the US had “a range of options, up to and including Iran deciding that they will give [it] up, which of course we would welcome.”
“I would not, never tell this group or the world what we’re willing to do or how far we’re willing to go, but we have options, for sure,” Hegseth said.
Trump also seemed to nod to these options when, on Saturday, he advised his social media followers to watch Mark Levin’s Fox News show, during which Levin advocated that Trump “get the uranium.”