{"id":37838,"date":"2026-03-26T22:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/37838\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T22:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:22:18","slug":"how-trumps-plot-to-grab-irans-nuclear-fuel-would-actually-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/37838\/","title":{"rendered":"How Trump\u2019s Plot to Grab Iran’s Nuclear Fuel Would Actually Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly<\/a> weighing whether to send ground troops to Iran<\/a> in order to retrieve the country\u2019s highly enriched uranium. However, the administration has shared little information about which troops would be deployed, how they would retrieve the nuclear material, or where the material would go next.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are going to have to go and get it,\u201d secretary of state Marco Rubio said at a congressional briefing<\/a> earlier this month, referring to the possible operation.<\/p>\n

There are some indications that an operation is close on the horizon. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> that the Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 brigade combat troops to the Middle East. (At the time of writing, the order has not been made.) The troops would come from the Army\u2019s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes<\/a> in \u201cjoint forcible entry operations.\u201d On Wednesday, Iran\u2019s government rejected<\/a> Trump\u2019s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president \u201cis prepared to unleash hell\u201d in Iran if a peace deal is not reached\u2014a plan some lawmakers have reportedly<\/a> expressed concern about.<\/p>\n

Drawing from publicly available intelligence and their own experience, two experts outlined the likely contours of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They tell WIRED that any version of a ground operation would be incredibly complicated and pose a huge risk to the lives of American troops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally think a ground operation using special forces supported by a larger force is extremely, extremely risky and ultimately infeasible,\u201d Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, tells WIRED.<\/p>\n

Nuclear Ambitions<\/p>\n

Any version of the operation would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that aren\u2019t in close proximity to each other, the experts say. Jonathan Hackett, a former operations specialist for the Marines and the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells WIRED that as many as 10 locations could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak, and Darkhovin research reactors; the Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin enrichment facilities; the Saghand, Chine, and Yazd mines; and the Bushehr power plant.<\/p>\n

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency<\/a>, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country\u2019s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which may be able to support<\/a> a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, though weapon-grade material generally consists<\/a> of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says that the other two enrichment facilities may also have 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and that the power plant and all three research reactors may have 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that any such supplies deserve careful attention.<\/p>\n

Hackett says that eight of the 10 sites\u2014with the exception of Isfahan, which is likely intact underground, and \u201cPickaxe Mountain,\u201d a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz\u2014were mostly or partially buried after last June\u2019s air raids<\/a>. Just before the war, Faragasso says, Iran backfilled the tunnel entrances to the Isfahan facility with dirt.<\/p>\n

The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve American troops physically retrieving nuclear material. Hackett says that this material would be stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas inside \u201clarge cement vats.\u201d Faragasso adds that it\u2019s unclear how many of these vats may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops would have to bring excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving immense amounts of dirt to retrieve them<\/p>\n

A comparatively less risky version of the operation would still necessitate ground troops, according to Hackett. However, it would primarily use air strikes to entomb nuclear material inside of their facilities. Ensuring that nuclear material is inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragasso says, would entail destroying the entrances to underground facilities and ideally collapsing the facilities\u2019 underground roofs.<\/p>\n

Softening the Area<\/p>\n

Hackett tells WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump\u2019s negotiations with Iran are \u201cprobably a ruse\u201d that buys time to move troops into place.<\/p>\n

Hackett says that an operation would most likely begin with aerial bombardments in the areas surrounding the target sites. These bombers, he says, would likely be from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a \u201crapid-response\u201d force, and the 31st MEU, the only<\/a> Marine unit continuously deployed abroad in strategic areas, have reportedly<\/a> both been deployed<\/a> to the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly weighing whether to send ground troops to Iran in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[38,34,179,7290,1258,7479,8889,16606,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-37838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-military","11":"tag-military-tech","12":"tag-nuclear","13":"tag-nuclear-power","14":"tag-nuclear-war","15":"tag-nukes","16":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116297815972319324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37838","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=37838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}