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President Trump said Monday that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium must either be turned over to the United States or destroyed under international supervision as part of any agreement to end the war.
Getting into it: In a Truth Social post, Trump laid out his conditions for what he calls Iran’s “nuclear dust,” a nontechnical term he’s used for enriched uranium since the conflict began. “The Enriched Uranium (Nuclear Dust!) will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location, with the Atomic Energy Commission, or its equivalent, being witness to this process and event.”
Trump didn’t specify whether the demand applies only to Iran’s roughly 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium or to its entire inventory, though US officials have suggested the full stockpile (most of which is believed to be buried at the Isfahan nuclear site after earlier US strikes) would need to be removed. House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the framing on Fox over the weekend. “We’ll take care of the nuclear dust. We’ll get the Strait of Hormuz reopened, which will be great for gas prices here and stability around the world.”
The uranium issue sits at the heart of an emerging deal being hammered out in Qatar, where Qatari officials have taken on an increasingly central mediating role alongside Pakistan. According to a senior administration official, the framework gives both sides a 60-day clock to nail down a full peace deal, gets Iran to pledge it will never build a nuclear weapon and to hand over its “nuclear dust,” and gets the Strait of Hormuz “de-mined and back open for business.” In return, the US would slowly roll back its naval blockade and hand Iran the economic relief it’s been after, but only once Iranian officials deliver on their side.
Crucially, the deal doesn’t actually spell out how Iran will give up its stockpile, kicking those specifics down the road to the follow-on nuclear talks. According to US officials, Iran initially balked at putting the stockpile on the table this early, but American negotiators sent word through intermediaries that without at least a broad commitment up front, the US would walk away and pick the fight back up. Behind the scenes, military planners have reportedly drawn up plans to hit the stockpile with bunker-busting bombs, and Trump at one point mulled a risky joint US-Israeli commando operation to go grab the uranium, though he never signed off on it. There are also less drastic paths, including handing the uranium to Russia (as Iran did under the 2015 Obama deal that Trump dissolved in 2018) or diluting it to a level that can’t be weaponized.
Iran, for its part, has been far more cautious. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday that the nuclear file hasn’t even come up yet, insisting the focus is “on ending the war” and that “at this stage we are not discussing the details of the nuclear issue.” He also pushed back on the idea that a deal was imminent and argued that management of the Strait of Hormuz should be “a matter for its coastal states.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck an optimistic note from India, saying a deal could be finalized “today” while warning that if talks collapse, Washington would find “another way.”
