an airfield, bulldozers and a thousand soldiers in the largest commando operation

“They will not have a nuclear weapon because now they are incapable of that, and then I will leave, and I will take everyone with me, and if necessary we will return to carry out specific attacks,” Trump stressed in conversation with the agency. Reuters. “I had a goal: they will not have a nuclear weapon, and that goal has been met,” he had declared a few hours earlier from the Oval Office.

In parallel, Trump stated through his Truth Social platform that Tehran had requested a ceasefire. Request that will be considered as long as the regime facilitates the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, of vital interest for international trade.

“The new president of the Iranian regime, much less radicalized and much smarter than his predecessors, just asked the United States of America for a CEASE FIRE!” Trump wrote. “We will consider it when the Strait of Hormuz is open, free and clear. Until then, we are reducing Iran to nothing or, as they say, back to the Stone Age!”

It was, however, Trump himself who ordered his vice president J.D. Vance to privately let the countries acting as intermediaries in the negotiations with Iran know that the United States was open to declaring a ceasefire as long as Tehran met certain demands, according to Reuters.

The head of Iranian diplomacy, Abás Araqchiwho had made it clear the day before that his people will not settle for a truce, but for the definitive cessation of hostilities, denied Trump’s version this Wednesday, which he called “false and baseless.”

Having discarded the ambitious objective of changing the regime – an objective that Trump, however, says he has more than met -, the White House tenant focuses his attention on the 450 kg of uranium that Iran keeps enriched to 60% purity, one step away from the 90% necessary to use it for military purposes, and which are usually kept in cylinders similar to diving tanks.

In mid-March, Trump himself acknowledged in Fox News that the United States was not “focused” on recovering enriched uranium reserves. “For now, we are focused on destroying their missiles and drones.” A week later, however, Trump asked the Pentagon to draw up a plan to seize Iran’s enriched uranium, according to The Washington Post y The Wall Street Journal.

The mission would require, according to information from Postthe airlift of soldiers and heavy equipment to support the excavation and recovery of radioactive material, and the construction of a landing strip. Christine WormuthSecretary of the Army during the presidency of Joe Bidenestimates that carrying out this operation in Isfahan alone would easily require 1,000 troops.

“I’m sure the Iranians have thought this through and will try to make it as difficult as possible to carry out this operation quickly,” Wormuth told the agency. Associated Press. “So I imagine it will be a pretty meticulous effort to go down underground, get your bearings, try to discern… which ones are real cylinders, which ones may be decoys, to try to avoid booby traps.”

Contradictions

“Iran’s constantly changing targets for highly enriched uranium underscore that there is no military solution to the Iranian proliferation threat,” he said. Kelsey Davenportdirector of Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association.

“When this war ends, Iran will retain materials and knowledge relevant to making a bomb. How does the United States plan to address that risk when its credibility is in tatters?” the specialist asks.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have been unable to verify Iranian nuclear material since June last year. It was then that the United States attacked the Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz facilities with bunker-busting bombs as part of Operation Midnight Hammer.

The military campaign coordinated with Israel inflicted significant damage on its nuclear program. He delayed it considerably, according to the experts’ assessment, but without dismantling it, as Trump had advanced.

The Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossiestimates that half of Iran’s enriched uranium reserves remain stored in the underground tunnels of the Isfahan complex, although the lack of inspections prevents us from knowing their whereabouts with certainty.

The Argentine diplomat warned last year that Iran would have the capacity to build a dozen nuclear bombs if the regime decided to militarize its nuclear program, and Tehran claims that the nature of its project was always peaceful.

The late supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Jameneiissued a fatwa more than two decades ago against the development of atomic weapons. However, Operation Epic Fury may have forced a major change within the regime.

The radicalization of the Islamic Republic, less dependent on the ideology of the clerics and more in need of the strength of the Guardians of the Revolution, makes analysts think that the new Iranian leadership, with Mojtab Jamenei leading the way, will have more interest in developing nuclear weapons as a deterrence tool to prevent future attacks.

The big question is knowing how far Trump is willing to go to steal the uranium that Iran needs to develop a nuclear weapon. The US president is preparing the ground to announce a ceasefire, but maintains a broad military deployment in the Middle East.

It has in its hands the ability to deploy troops on the ground, to carry out a movie operation to steal enriched uranium. It’s something that American troops and Israeli forces have been rehearsing for years.