President Donald Trump revealed on Friday that a 20-year moratorium on Iran’s nuclear program would be sufficient for him on that portion of a possible agreement to end the war.
The president’s acknowledgement on Air Force One following his trip to China appears to suggest a shift in his thinking, given he has repeatedly said they must agree to completely and permanently dismantle its nuclear program.
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“Twenty years is enough, but the level of guarantee from them is not enough,” Trump said about Tehran’s latest offer. “In other words, it’s got to be a real 20 years.”
Simultaneously, he also said that he throws away any Iranian proposal that has “any nuclear of any form,” though his comments suggest that he’s open to Iran restarting its nuclear program eventually.
“Well, I looked at it,” Trump said of a recent proposal. “If I don’t like the first sentence, I just throw it away,” adding it was an “unacceptable sentence because they have fully agreed [to] no nuclear. And if they have any nuclear of any form, I don’t read the rest of it.”
The U.S. military carried out strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last June in Operation Midnight Hammer, and carried out a roughly five-week war primarily going after their ballistic missile arsenal, navy, and defense industrial base.
Iran is believed to have roughly 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium buried somewhere beneath those collapsed nuclear facilities. It’s unclear where exactly it is and what state it’s in following the strikes.
Trump, who often refers to the highly enriched uranium as “nuclear dust,” has said he wants it removed from the country, but doing so will not be an easy feat, especially if the effort is taken without the approval of the Iranians.
Former U.S. Central Command commander, Gen. Joseph Votel, told the Washington Examiner that senior leaders could “put together a military operation that could go in and” retrieve it, but it’s “a lot of resources, it’s a lot of risk, it’s a lot of time to get in and do that, and it’s a pretty significant undertaking.”
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Votel believes it’s “more likely” that the administration is considering “a solution where the U.S. military may be supporting civilian agencies,” like the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Obama administration agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, in 2015, which Trump withdrew from during his first term in 2018. He has consistently railed against the deal, which included a 15-year moratorium on enriching uranium beyond 3.67%.
The buried highly enriched uranium is believed to be enriched to 60%.
