Washington: US President Donald Trump said late on Monday that obtaining uranium from Iran after last year’s US‑led strikes on Tehran’s nuclear sites would be a “long” and “difficult” process, underscoring the scale of the damage and the complexity of any follow‑up operations.
“Operation Midnight Hammer was a complete and total obliteration of the Nuclear Dust sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding: “Therefore, digging it out will be a long and difficult process.”
The US leader regularly uses the term “nuclear dust” to refer to Iran’s stock of enriched uranium, which the United States accuses Iran of hoarding in an effort to
build an atomic bomb. Intelligence briefings cited by US officials describe that material as the core of Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme, stored in hardened underground facilities and deeply buried bunkers engineered to withstand aerial bombardment and precision strikes, AFP reported.
Trump has also used “nuclear dust” at times to describe the physical debris left behind from US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities carried out in June of last year.
The 79‑year‑old president maintains that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium would ultimately be transferred to US territory, despite Iran’s foreign ministry denying any such plans. In a statement released earlier this week, Tehran labeled the idea of surrendering its nuclear material as “a fantasy of hostile propaganda,” reiterating that its programme is strictly for civilian and defensive purposes.
The United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28 aimed at dismantling what Israel described as “the existential threat” posed by the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.