Trump says he wants Iran’s uranium mostly for ‘public relations’

US President Donald Trump said the US objective of recovering highly enriched uranium from Iran was “more for public relations than it is for anything else,” while reiterating his commitment to removing the nuclear material.

Mr Trump said in an interview with Fox News aired on the evening of May 14 in the US that the mission to recover the uranium, which is thought to be buried beneath the rubble of bombed nuclear sites, could be viewed as unnecessary because the US was maintaining round-the-clock surveillance. 

“We have nine cameras on that site, on those three sites, 24 hours a day,” Mr Trump said. “We know exactly what’s happening. Nobody’s even gotten close to it.”

Still, the US president said, he ultimately would rather get the material out of the country.

“I just feel better if I got it, actually,” Mr Trump said. “But it’s, I think it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else.” 

Mr Trump also raised the prospect of bombing the site again to make sure it’s inaccessible.

The status of the nuclear material has been a sticking point in ongoing talks with Iran’s leadership to draw a conclusion to the war. The US president said there had been a “back and forth” in which Iran agreed to turn over the material and then reneged later in the talks.

“They agreed to it, but then they take it back, and they agree,” Mr Trump said.

The ongoing war, which has strained energy flows throughout the Middle East and driven up prices worldwide, was part of talks between Mr Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Mr Trump said that China had reiterated their desire for traffic to resume through the Strait of Hormuz without any sort of toll, and agreed that Tehran should not have a nuclear weapon. 

Less clear was whether Beijing would pressure its allies in Tehran to strike an agreement. China has not commented on the exchange, only to say that the two leaders discussed events in the Middle East. 

“He did offer, he said, ‘If I can be of any help at all, I would like to be of help,’” Mr Trump said of Mr Xi.

The issue of the remaining nuclear material – estimated to be around 434kg, an amount that would take weeks to remove – has been a point of emphasis for Israel, which has assisted the US in the bombing campaign against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with ThePress Nigeria that aired May 10 the conflict would not be over until the material was removed.

“I’m not going to give a timetable to it, but I’m going to say that’s a terrifically important mission,” Mr Netanyahu said. BLOOMBERG