WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said late Monday that the United States obtaining uranium from Iran would be “long” and “difficult” in the aftermath of last year’s US strikes on Tehran’s nuclear sites.
“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 president regularly uses the term “nuclear dust” to refer to Iran’s stock of enriched uranium, which Washington accuses Tehran of hoarding in order to develop an atomic bomb.
However, he has also at times used the term to describe material left following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June last year.
The 79-year-old president maintains that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium would eventually be transferred to US territory, despite Iran’s foreign ministry rejecting any such plans.
The United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28 to eliminate what Israel described as “the existential threat” posed by the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.
Israeli officials have claimed that Tehran intensified efforts to acquire an atomic weapon after the end of the 12-day war in June last year, which was initiated by Israel and included US bombings of three nuclear facilities, including an enrichment plant.