From the Liveblog of
Friday, June 5, 2026
Trump says US can get uranium from Iran without a deal but doesn’t need to: ‘It’s entombed’; reveals rejecting plan to send US troops to get it
US President Donald Trump tells reporters that Washington does not need a deal with Iran to retrieve enriched uranium from the country, but adds that the US does not need to do so anyway.
He reveals that he thought about sending US troops to retrieve the buried stockpile at the very start of the war, but indicated he declined to do so because of the risks and potential complications. “I didn’t feel like being like Jimmy Carter,” he says, alluding to the former president’s failed effort to rescue 52 US Embassy staff held hostage by Iran in 1980.
He claims that a deal with Iran would ensure its removal or disposal, something Iran has denied. “As it stands right now, we will go in in the not too distant future” [to deal with it by agreement].
“We could get it right now. I don’t think they could stop us if we wanted, but there’s no reason to. It’s entombed,” Trump says.
“It’s very safe down there,” he adds. “We have cameras, every angle of those three sites are being watched at all times. If anybody went there, we’ll see exactly what’s happening and we’ll blow it up a little bit further….
“[It’s ] very hard to get that material, but I still nevertheless want it,” he says. “I don’t want to do it if we’re in conflict. I don’t want to put men in that kind of danger.
Trump details, for the first time, a plan he says he did not approve that would have sent American troops into Iran to collect what he commonly calls the “nuclear dust.” He says the operation would have taken two weeks or more, and would have required the airlifting in of “massive equipment.”
“I didn’t want to be in a position where you had…,” he says, then pauses, before resuming: “It’s not like Venezuela — like you go in, you’re there for a matter of minutes and you’re out. And everybody’s waving goodbye as you take off,” he elaborates. “This is different. You have to be there for two weeks. You’d need massive equipment. You’d have to airlift the equipment.”
“There was a time at the very beginning when we thought about doing that, because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out,” he adds.
Previously, Trump has insisted on the need to remove or destroy Iran’s stockpile of some 440 kilograms of 60-percent enriched uranium — a short step from weapons-grade. Nuclear experts have also urged the US to require the removal of all uranium enriched by Iran to lower levels, to better block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump’s apparently shifting stance as regards the uranium stockpile follows his recent backing away from his previous demand for an end to all Iranian enrichment, saying on May 15 that he would accept a 20-year suspension of uranium enrichment. You know, you’re in a war zone.”
Trump also says that he did not want to meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, but adds that “I’d be honored to meet him.”
He says if Washington and Tehran reached a deal, it was possible that the two would meet and adds, “If it happened… I’d be respectful.”
“In some circles he has a very good reputation actually,” he says of Khamenei.
The Times of Israel Community.