US considers idea of special operation to seize Iran’s uranium: Sources

NEW YORK – US President Donald Trump is weighing the option of deploying special forces on the ground to seize Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium, as officials grow increasingly concerned the stockpile may have been moved, according to three diplomatic officials briefed on the matter.

The US and Israel struck key nuclear facilities during last June’s 12-day war. Uncertainty over Iran’s highly enriched uranium has intensified because it has been almost nine months since United Nations atomic inspectors last verified its location, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss restricted deliberations.

“They haven’t been able to get to it and at some point, maybe we will,” Mr Trump said late on March 7 during a briefing aboard Air Force One. “We haven’t gone after it, but it’s something we can do later on. We wouldn’t do it now.”

One of the stated aims of the attacks on Iran has been to rid the Islamic Republic of any capability to produce nuclear weapons. But the strikes on atomic facilities in 2025 complicated the task of tracking the uranium. That has now become a live issue again for military planners, and it is unclear whether any special operation would be conducted by US or Israeli forces.

Publicly, US officials have projected confidence that they know where the uranium is stored. Privately, there is said to be less certainty. In the weeks before the latest US and Israeli strikes, monitors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observed sustained activity outside tunnels built into a hillside near Isfahan, where the material was last documented before the fighting began.

That activity increases the likelihood that at least some of the 441kg of highly enriched uranium stored at the complex was moved, said a diplomat in the Austrian capital familiar with the agency’s assessments. 

The stockpile is sufficient for roughly a dozen nuclear warheads if further refined, with the US saying specifically 11 bombs. Iran also possesses more than 8,000kg of uranium enriched to lower levels, material that could be upgraded if enrichment capacity is restored.

US and Israeli officials are actively searching for the highly enriched material and have contingency plans that include deploying special forces if its location is confirmed, one of the officials said.

A senior Trump administration official said on March 3 that the US had two options to render Iran’s enriched uranium unusable. If the US had physical control of the territory, people could be sent in to dilute it on-site and safely dispense of it, the official said. They could otherwise remove it from Iran and deal with it in another location, the official said.

Semafor reported earlier that a special operations raid to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile was an option, while Axios reported earlier that the US and Israel were looking at potential ground forces to seize it. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on any potential plan. 

Mr Trump said on March 7 he did not want to talk about ground troops, though he did not rule out the possibility. He said they would have to be “for a very good reason” and if they were ever used, Iran would have to be so “decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level”.

The US military has prepared detailed plans for incursions into Iran in the past. One such operation, named Project Honey Badger and developed decades ago in the wake of the US embassy hostage crisis, envisioned airlifting roughly 2,400 special operations troops on more than 100 aircraft into Iran.

The plan involved transporting excavation equipment, including a heavy bulldozer, that would be critical for troops if they needed to remove buried uranium. 

First, though, the US and Israel would have to find it. Before the June conflict, Iran was the world’s most heavily inspected nuclear program, with IAEA monitors averaging more than one visit per day to declared facilities. That access ended after strikes hit Iran’s main enrichment plants at Fordow and Natanz, as well as its uranium processing center in Isfahan.

Even before the latest attack, Tehran’s government flagged it was prepared to take special measures to preserve the material. “The agency should not expect safeguard measures to be implemented under such wartime conditions as if hostilities had not occurred,” said Mr Reza Najafi, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA.

Tehran had previously signalled it was open to reducing or exporting its highly enriched stockpile as part of a broader diplomatic agreement. The latest round of fighting halted those negotiations.

The collapse of diplomacy has forced the US and Israel to review military contingencies, including the possibility of using ground forces to retrieve nuclear material, said a European official familiar with the planning.

One key challenge they would face is that it could be dispersed and then concealed indefinitely.

According to US regulatory estimates, the highly enriched uranium could be stored in roughly 16 cylinders about 91cm tall, comparable in size to large scuba tanks. Each cylinder would weigh about 25kg, light enough to be transported by vehicle or even potentially by hand.

It remains uncertain how much damage the US and Israel have inflicted on Iran’s enrichment infrastructure. Even if it is significant, the existence of uranium close to weapons grade outside monitored facilities poses a continuing risk.

Most analysts, including inside US intelligence, agree Iran has not decided to pursue weapons and the IAEA has not detected a structured weapons programme. The probability Iran decides to build a nuclear weapon remains below 50 per cent, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.

But the death of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening hours of the war has triggered a succession process that could reshape nuclear decision-making. Mr Khamenei had issued a religious edict, or fatwa, against developing nuclear weapons. A successor could revisit that stance.

Iran, joined last week by China and Russia, has indicated that “a sustainable diplomatic solution” remains possible, according to remarks at the IAEA. But recent statements from Mr Trump suggest the administration is prepared to pursue its objectives militarily.

The US Central Command announced on March 8 that a US service member died from injuries sustained in the opening days of the war with Iran, making it the seventh US death in the operation. BLOOMBERG