‘Why bother?’: Trump no longer feels the need to seize Iran’s uranium
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- Trump said at the G7 summit in France there is 'no rush' to retrieve highly enriched uranium from the Iranian nuclear sites the US bombed in June 2025, calling the material 'probably half a million dollars worth' and musing 'why do you even bother?'
- The Iran-US MOU announced a day earlier requires Iran to enrich uranium only to levels 'could never be used by the military,' though White House officials told The Washington Post that nuclear-program details remain subject to two more months of negotiations
- Trump acknowledged the war-ending deal secured no guarantees beyond what the 2015 JCPOA obtained, while insisting Iran will enrich uranium 'for nonmilitary purposes. Forever'
- Trump has offered contradictory statements on the uranium in recent weeks — saying it 'will be unearthed… and DESTROYED' late last month, calling it 'nuclear dust' that had to be taken, then telling Fox News destroying it wasn't 'necessary except from a public relations standpoint'
- Foreign policy analyst Logan McMillen characterized Trump's G7 remarks as an admission that 'the uranium was a false justification for war,' arguing 'the real purpose was to punish Iran for the crime of being an independent economic power that refused to participate in America's petro economy'
- Former NSC chief of staff Alex Gray insisted on Fox News that Trump had secured a deal that, for the first time, would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — a claim at odds with Trump's own JCPOA comparison
Why it matters: Trump's devaluation of Iran's uranium stockpile to 'probably half a million dollars' undermines the stated top objective of the February war and hands critics ammunition that the real target was Iran's independent energy economy, which Iran flexed by closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending prices soaring. The two-month nuclear negotiation window leaves the core question formally unresolved even as the war is declared over.
