For more than a decade President Trump has been intently focused on making sure Iran never had the nuclear fuel in hand to build a nuclear weapon. Until this morning, when he told Reuters in an interview, that he didn’t really care because it is “so far underground.”
Asked about the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium that international inspectors say is likely buried at two sites in Iran — enough to make 10 to a dozen bombs — Mr. Trump said it was no longer a worry.
“We’ll always be watching it by satellite,” the president was quoted as saying. It was the second time in 24 hours Mr. Trump had declared that the nuclear problem with Iran had been solved, despite all evidence to the contrary.
U.S. intelligence agencies have been watching Iran’s nuclear sites by satellites for years, with particular intensity since the U.S. attacks in June 2025 on three major nuclear facilities. What made his statement so stunning was that the ability to produce uranium, to stockpile it and to enrich it to a form usable in a bomb, has been a constant theme for Mr. Trump as he has been making the case that a nuclear armed Iran would be an existential threat to the United States and the world.
The core of his critique of the 2015 nuclear accord that President Obama reached with Iran was simple: While Mr. Obama shipped 97 percent of Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel out of the country, he left the Iranians with the ability to produce more.Announcing his withdrawal from that agreement in 2018 he said that even if Iran was in compliance with the accord — which it was at the time — it could “still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short period of time.”
Today, its stockpile puts it far closer to the final steps than it was when he made that statement eight years ago.
His justification for bombing Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan — the three enrichment and nuclear conversion facilities he struck in June — was to make sure Iran could not turn its stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium into a bomb-usable 90 percent and fashion a weapon. During the February negotiations over a diplomatic accord with Iran, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, demanded that Iran ship all of its nuclear fuel out of the country and agree never to produce more on Iranian soil.
When those negotiations appeared to be stuck Mr. Trump argued that the attacks on the country were necessary because Iran had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program,” which intelligence officials said meant they were producing new centrifuges that could perform that enrichment.
It is possible, of course, that Mr. Trump is being deliberately deceptive — and that before he withdraws American forces he plans to order a raid on Iranian storage sites to destroy or remove the casks of nuclear material, which look a bit like large scuba tanks.
The United States and Israel have both been planning and rehearsing those raids on the Isfahan and Natanz facilities, where the International Atomic Energy Agency says most of the 60 percent enriched material is located. While there is evidence that the Iranians regained access to the Isfahan site after the June bombing, there is no indication that any of it has been removed.
Mr. Trump told Reuters, however, that the problem was solved. “They won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now,” he said. On Tuesday Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. had achieved its objective of destroying the missile and drone facilities that gave protection to the nuclear program.
Iran is not believed to be enriching uranium now, according to the I.A.E.A.’s director general, Rafael Grossi. But Mr. Grossi has often made the point that as long as the 60 percent enriched stockpile remains in Iran, conducting a few days or weeks of additional enrichment could happen in an underground site, perhaps undetected.
Mr. Trump left open the possibility that he could withdraw forces and then come back if the Iranian government was moving forward and spinning centrifuges. “They won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now, and then I’ll leave, and I’ll take everybody with me, and if we have to we’ll come back to do spot hits,’’ he said.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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