Trump claims US, Iran will jointly extract uranium before transfer to US

PHOENIX, April 18 — President Donald Trump said yesterday that the United States and Iran would jointly remove uranium from Tehran’s nuclear sites with excavators under any peace deal, before the material is transferred to US territory.

Trump’s comment came despite Iran’s foreign ministry saying earlier that the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of enriched uranium would not be transferred “anywhere.”

“Somebody said, how are we going to get the nuclear dust? We’re going to get it by going in with Iran, with lots of excavators,” Trump told a gathering of the conservative Turning Point USA movement in Phoenix, Arizona.

“We need the biggest excavators you can imagine,” he added.

“But we’re going to go in together with Iran. We’re going to get it. We’re going to take it back home to the USA very soon.”

Trump’s comments elaborated on his claim on Thursday that Iran had agreed to hand over its enriched uranium, but without giving any details on such a transfer.

The US leader regularly uses the term “nuclear dust” to refer to Iran’s stock of enriched uranium, which the United States accuses Iran of hoarding in order to make an atomic bomb.

But he has also sometimes used it to refer to material left from US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June last year.

Trump sounded increasingly upbeat on Friday about the chances of a peace deal with Iran, telling AFP on Friday there were “no sticking points” and a deal was “very close.”

His remarks on Iran came during a speech to Turning Point USA, where he was introduced by Erika Kirk, the widow of the group’s founder Charlie Kirk—a Trump ally who was assassinated in September. — AFP