{"id":26824,"date":"2026-03-19T15:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26824\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:14:10","slug":"will-he-deploy-us-troops-to-seize-uranium-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26824\/","title":{"rendered":"Will he deploy US troops to seize uranium?"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran<\/a>, one that could define his time in office: Will he put U.S. troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium<\/a> that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons?<\/p>\n

Trump has offered shifting reasons<\/a> for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will \u201cnever have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The president has been more circumspect about how far he\u2019s willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran\u2019s weapons program once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses.<\/p>\n

Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummeled in U.S. bombings<\/a> Trump ordered last June that he had claimed \u201cobliterated\u201d Tehran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of U.S. troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the U.S.<\/a> in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America\u2019s psyche.<\/p>\n

At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they\u2019ll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the U.S. and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran\u2019s enriched uranium even more critical. That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs<\/a>, should it decide to weaponize its program.<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called Trump\u2019s confused and chaotic objectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there — securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence,\u201d said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republican allies of Trump stress that there are plans in place to deal with the enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, on Wednesday cited \u201ca number of plans that have been put on the table.\u201d He declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

Others acknowledged the complications of deploying troops into Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground,\u201d said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t. But no one\u2019s ever briefed me about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott added it\u2019s not tenable to allow the stockpile to remain: \u201cI think it would be helpful to get rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump and his advisers are rigidly obtuse<\/p>\n

Nearly three weeks into a conflict that\u2019s left hundreds of people dead, tested longtime alliances<\/a> and brought pain to the global economy<\/a>, Trump and his top advisers have been rigidly obtuse about their deliberations over Iran\u2019s uranium stockpile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to talk about that,\u201d Trump said last week when asked about the enriched uranium. \u201cBut we have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we\u2019re not finished yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, Trump appeared to claim the strikes had already neutralized the threat. \u201cThey don\u2019t have nuclear potential,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> told reporters earlier this week that the administration sees no point in telegraphing \u201cwhat we\u2019re willing to do or how far we\u2019re willing to go\u201d while asserting \u201dwe have options, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts say it\u2019s doable but won\u2019t be easy<\/p>\n

Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump\u2019s first term, said that seizing or destroying the enriched uranium is certainly doable, if the president decides to go that route.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Israeli forces have been making strides toward creating the conditions \u2014 namely, establishing total air superiority \u2014 that would allow for special operations forces operators, who are trained in blowing up centrifuges and dealing with nuclear material, to conduct such an operation if the president decides to go that route.<\/p>\n

To be certain, a troops-on-the-ground effort is expected to be far more complicated than other recent high-profile, lightning-strike insertion operations, such as the January capture of Venezuela\u2019s Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> or the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden<\/a>, Goldberg said. And the likely need to remove rubble to get to the canisters of enriched uranium adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you actually own the airspace and you can have close air support and drones and everything else up in the sky for pretty wide perimeter, presumably you could do a lot,\u201d said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.<\/p>\n

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week that the assumption is much of the enriched uranium remains in the trio of Iranian nuclear sites bombarded last year by the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impression we have \u2026 is that it hasn\u2019t been moved,\u201d said Grossi, adding that a bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Iran\u2019s Isfahan facility while lesser amounts are at the Natanz and Fordow facilities that were destroyed in last year\u2019s American strikes.<\/p>\n

Testifying before a Senate committee<\/a> on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her prepared remarks said that the U.S. attacks on Iran had \u201cobliterated\u201d Iran\u2019s nuclear enrichment program and buried underground facilities.<\/p>\n

Gabbard said the U.S. has been monitoring whether Iran\u2019s leaders will try to restart its nuclear program but said that they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability. She added that the clerical authority overseeing Iranian government has been degraded in Israel\u2019s strikes on its leadership but remains intact.<\/p>\n

Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute, said that an effort to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely take more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site and would take time to complete.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, not acting to secure the enriched uranium also comes with risk. Should Iran\u2019s hard-liners remain in power, and with enriched material, they will now have greater motivation to build a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has put himself between a rock and a hard place,\u201d Buck said. \u201cThroughout this, he has had maximalist aims, but he\u2019s wanted to maintain minimal effort in order to keep the costs low.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Matthew Lee and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12667,9550,10057,34,2828,12664,392,12668,12665,5556,11612,12666],"class_list":{"0":"post-26824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-american-troops-in-iran","9":"tag-boots-on-the-ground","10":"tag-donald-trump-iran","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-iran-nuclear-program","13":"tag-troops-in-iran","14":"tag-trump","15":"tag-trump-deploy-troops-in-iran","16":"tag-trump-deploy-troops","17":"tag-uranium","18":"tag-us-troops","19":"tag-ustroops-in-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116256496937220531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}