How Trump’s dream of seizing enriched uranium from Iran could end in catastrophe

As the US-Israeli war against Iran entered its second month on Saturday, US President Donald Trump had an urgent message for the American people: turn on Fox News.

Those who followed the president’s advice – delivered through his Truth Social media platform – would have tuned in to see ultraconservative pundit Mark Levin publicly calling on Trump to seize Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium by force.

“We’ve got to get the uranium,” he said. “If it cannot be destroyed, if it cannot be altered, we gotta get it.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Trump was seriously considering launching a military operation to seize Tehran’s most highly enriched uranium stockpiles.

And the president is not the only person in the US government flirting with the idea of an all-out ground offensive to capture the highly radioactive material.

“People are going to have to go and get it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the US Congress in early March.

Out of reach

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran held roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent before the June 2025 US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Tehran maintains that its nuclear programme is restricted to civilian use only.

“That’s a serious amount,” said Ludovica Castelli, a specialist in Middle Eastern nuclear policy at the Istituto Affari Internazionali think-tank. “If taken to weapons-grade – 90 percent – it’s roughly enough for 10 nuclear weapons. What we don’t know is what happened to all of it.”

Despite Trump’s claims last year that Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated”, it is unlikely that the United States managed to destroy the Islamic Republic’s already-enriched uranium.

A satellite photo analysed by French Daily Le Monde suggests that at least part of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles had been moved into underground tunnels near Isfahan in June last year, out of reach of the air strikes that came thundering down just days later.

Risky business

To put it another way, that leaves enough to be “quite worrying for the international community, particularly the United States and Israel”, said Shahin Modarres, a specialist in Iran at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona.

Christian Emery, a specialist in international relations and Iran’s nuclear programme at University College London, said that the remaining uranium was no doubt a tempting target for an administration eager to create a concrete goal for a war that has so far failed to bring down the Iranian government.

“The reason Trump’s strategy has unravelled is that he clearly did not plan for the possibility that Iran would refuse to capitulate and accept terms he could dictate,” Emery said. “Politically, therefore, the idea of a short ground operation to seize most, if not all, of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is extremely attractive to him. It would allow him to declare victory without having to reach any agreement with Iran.”

Clive Jones, the director of Durham University’s Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, also suggested that such an operation could give Trump a quick way out of the war he started.

“One can only think that if such a raid was to be successful – and I doubt it could be – it might give Trump his off ramp and declare the war over,” he said. The Wall Street Journal reported that people around the president were trying to sell him on the idea of a rapid military operation against Iran’s nuclear stockpiles.

But Emma Salisbury, a national security specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute think-tank, stressed that this was not the kind of operation that could be carried out by a team of special forces slipping into the Islamic Republic undetected.

“There would definitely need to be ground troops involved in such an operation, and depending on the location, probably quite a lot of troops and other personnel,” she said.

“This is not a quick in-and-out extraction.”

Such an operation would be a steep escalation in a war that has already spread across the Middle East – especially for a president who promised his base that he would not lead the country into new wars, let alone send American troops to fight and die overseas.

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“At a minimum, it would be one of the most risky and difficult operations the US military has undertaken since the Second World War,” Emery said.

First, the US would have to be sure exactly where Iran has stashed its stockpiles.

“It is likely the Iranians would have dispersed their enriched uranium, so locating it will be difficult,” Jones said. If that turns out to be the case, retrieving it would involve multiple ground offensives fighting their way through enemy territory on several fronts.

Such a complex operation would almost certainly need to be coordinated with Israeli troops, Modarres said. Salisbury confirmed that Israel has units expressly trained to conduct special operations on Iranian soil.

A toxic task

Modarres explained that such an operation would need several phases – first, an aerial bombardment to degrade Iran’s defences, followed by sending in special forces to take out enemy troops and secure the area.

These would be followed by military engineers tasked with locating the stockpiles, setting up a perimeter and bringing in the trucks, and diggers and cargo planes needed for the extraction. Finally, Emery said, these would give way to “experts trained in handling highly volatile nuclear material, who might also require tunnelling equipment or machinery such as excavators to clear debris”.    

Experts say such an operation would take several days at least, and could drag on over several weeks. Salisbury said that on a scale of one to 10, the mission was as dangerous as you could get.

“An absolute 10,” she said. “The operation is risky in itself, but the need to be handling uranium hexafluoride makes it hugely dangerous.”

Castelli said that even units trained in handling radioactive material would face significant danger.

“On the ground, US forces would be operating in a hostile environment, exposed to attacks from Iranian forces – the longer troops stay on the ground, the greater the risk,” she said. “The material in question, uranium hexafluoride, is toxic, and at 60 percent enrichment it poses additional risks during handling and transport. Troops would need specialised protective gear, and if any containers were damaged, the danger would increase significantly.”

Jones said that an operation of this scale would “likely incur large casualties on both sides”.

And even if the mission was successful, the loss of 440 kilograms of enriched uranium would not stop Iran from potentially developing nuclear weapons in the future.

“Iran would still retain centrifuges, technical expertise and possibly other uranium stocks, including material enriched to 20 percent and below 5 percent, likely stored at multiple locations,” Castelli said. “Iran’s programme is not just about one stockpile – it’s about accumulated knowledge, infrastructure and remaining materials. As long as those persist, the risk of a future militarisation of the programme remains.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.