President Donald Trump said Thursday that only the United States and China possess the equipment powerful enough to retrieve enriched uranium from Iran’s deeply buried nuclear sites — and even that may be impossible after recent U.S. strikes.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said the targeted facilities were “obliterated” by American military action.
“We attacked their nuclear sites, and they were obliterated.”
Trump pushed back on media reports questioning the damage.
“It turned out that, you know, CNN was wrong. They said, ‘Well, maybe they weren’t hit that hard.’ They were hit so hard, nobody knows if you could even get it out,” he said.
The president said the sites were buried so deep inside mountains that the strikes caused the rock formations to collapse on top of the material.
“We’re the only ones with that kind of equipment that’s powerful enough to go down that deep into a mountain, but that mountain crushed it,” Trump said.
“That mountain literally collapsed on top of it.”
Trump cited assessments from the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying the findings support the view that recovery would be extremely challenging.
“And now the atomic energy, as you know, has backed us up on that. They think it’s a very, very hard thing to get to, but we’ll get it anyway. But we’re the only ones — and China, I believe, does, too — that have the capability.”
The president did not provide details about the specific equipment required or explain how recovery could proceed if access remains this difficult.
His comments came amid ongoing scrutiny of the strikes’ impact on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and questions about the condition of any remaining enriched uranium at the targeted facilities.
