President Trump announced on Wednesday that American representatives are preparing to hold discussions with Iranian officials in the coming days, following the recent US bombing campaign which he claimed buried Iran’s enriched uranium deep beneath layers of rubble.
“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know,” Trump stated during a press conference held after the NATO summit concluded in The Hague.
He did not disclose the location of the meeting or identify who would represent the United States in the talks. The announcement came on the heels of Trump brokering a cease-fire earlier in the week between Iran and Israel, putting an end to what he termed the “12-Day War.”
“I could get a statement that they’re not going to go nuclear. We’re probably going to ask for that, but they’re not going to be doing it anyway.”
Trump reiterated his stance: “We may sign an agreement, [but] I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.”
He went on to explain that he believes a significant amount of Iran’s enriched uranium — close to 900 pounds — is now buried beneath what he described as 300 feet of destruction at the Fordow nuclear facility, which had been targeted by a barrage of twelve massive “bunker buster” bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds.
“We think everything nuclear is down there, they didn’t take it out,” he said.
“We think we hit them so hard and so fast, they didn’t get to move. And if you knew about that material, it’s very hard and very dangerous to move,” the president said.
“They call it dust, but it’s very heavy, it’s very, very hard to move. And they were way down. You know, they were 30 stories down. They’re literally 30-35 stories down underground. We think it’s covered with granite, concrete and steel.”
On Tuesday, Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Fox News that the UN agency was unaware of the uranium’s current location.
“We do not have information of the whereabouts of this material,” Grossi said, adding that the uranium had been enriched to 60% purity — still short of the 90-93% needed to manufacture nuclear arms.
Speaking to reporters before heading home from Europe, Trump, 79, lashed out at the media, accusing some journalists of downplaying the effects of the US strikes and likening the operation to America’s atomic bombings of Japan at the close of World War II.
“It was so bad that they ended the war,” he said of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Addressing a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report that suggested the Iranian nuclear effort might be restored within months, Trump dismissed the claim as mere speculation, saying, “they didn’t see it.”
On Wednesday, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission released its own evaluation, strongly supporting the impact of the strike on the Fordow site. The commission asserted that the bombs “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”
“We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”
One remaining question is how the US intends to handle sanctions enforcement against Iranian oil exports — an issue that Trump has toughened in recent months.
In a post on social media Tuesday, Trump remarked that “China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran,” though he did not elaborate on the comment during Wednesday’s remarks, beyond noting: “they’re going to need money to put that country back in shape. We want to see that happen.”
{Matzav.com}