Trump Vows to Seize or Destroy Iran's Uranium Stockpile

President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday the United States will seize or destroy Iran’s roughly 900-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium and dismissed any Iranian proposal to collect tolls on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “We will get it. We don’t need it, we don’t want it. We’ll probably destroy it after we get it, but we’re not going to let them have it,” Trump said, according to The Tribune, in the most explicit US public statement to date on the disposition of the roughly 440 kilograms of 60-percent enriched material the International Atomic Energy Agency last verified inside Iran.

The remarks land 48 hours after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a directive to Iran’s negotiating team that the 60-percent material must remain on Iranian soil, according to two senior Iranian officials cited by The Times of Israel. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters Friday that “deep and significant gaps” remain between Tehran and Washington and that no agreement has been reached, per Al Jazeera’s live coverage.

The two leaders have now publicly nailed the central impasse of the Qatar-Pakistan mediation track to the wall. Trump’s “get it or destroy it” framing is the rhetorical bookend to Khamenei’s keep-it-home order. Whichever side bends in the days before the next Rome round will determine whether the parallel mediation channels run by Doha and Pakistan army chief Asim Munir produce a deal or collapse into the next phase of pressure.

A position hardened in public

Trump’s statement is notable less for novelty than for venue. Administration officials have privately told allies for weeks that any agreement must include physical removal or destruction of the 60-percent stockpile, but the president had not until Thursday committed the United States in his own voice to taking the material by force if necessary. By framing the demand as a US action — “we will get it” — rather than a condition Iran must meet, Trump removed the diplomatic ambiguity that had given Tehran’s negotiators room to propose intermediate steps such as dilution under IAEA seal or transfer to a third country.

The Khamenei directive, issued earlier this week and reported on Wednesday, instructed the Iranian delegation that the 60-percent material is a sovereign asset and a deterrent that cannot be surrendered. The supreme leader’s office has not commented publicly on Trump’s Thursday remarks, but state media on Friday repeated the line that the stockpile’s status is “not negotiable.”

Trump separately rejected a proposal floated by Iranian officials this month that Tehran be permitted to collect transit fees from tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, calling the idea a non-starter. The Hormuz question is the second pillar of the Rome agenda, alongside the uranium disposition, and France and the United Kingdom are circulating a competing UN Security Council text that would establish an international freedom-of-navigation mission in the strait — a parallel pressure track that complicates the US draft.

What “get it” would mean

Physically removing 440 kilograms of 60-percent enriched uranium hexafluoride is not a single act. The IAEA maintains a chain of custody on declared Iranian material, and any transfer out of country would require coordinated handover, sealed containers, and a receiving facility certified to handle near-weapons-grade material. Al Jazeera’s technical explainer published Friday notes that the stockpile is held across multiple sites and that the most plausible removal scenarios involve either dilution to low-enriched uranium inside Iran under inspector supervision or shipment to Russia, China, or a neutral third state — the path used in the 2003-2004 dismantling of Libya’s program, when components were flown to Tennessee under US custody.

Destruction in place, the alternative Trump named, is a narrower set of options. Uranium hexafluoride can be neutralized chemically or rendered unusable by mixing with depleted material, but doing so over Iranian objection would require either Iranian consent under a deal or a kinetic operation against the storage sites. Deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino on Thursday posted footage of a B-2 stealth bomber on his official account, a signal read in both capitals as a reminder that the kinetic option remains on the table.

Market reaction and what to watch

Brent crude closed Thursday up roughly 3 percent at about $108 a barrel, according to CNBC, with traders citing the Khamenei directive and the hardening US line as the primary drivers. Goldman Sachs analysts continue to flag $108 as a floor rather than a ceiling so long as the Hormuz question remains unresolved.

Three indicators will tell the story over the next 72 hours. First, whether Araghchi travels to Rome on schedule or pulls back, signaling Tehran’s read of the room. Second, whether the Qatari and Pakistani channels produce a face-saving formula — most likely a dilution-in-place arrangement under enhanced IAEA monitoring — that lets both leaders claim their public lines were honored. Third, whether the US tables a written proposal on the uranium disposition before the Rome session opens, or holds it back as leverage.

The Trump statement, the Khamenei directive, and the Araghchi “deep gaps” framing together describe a negotiation in which both sides have closed off retreat in public. That is either the prelude to a breakthrough engineered behind closed doors by Doha and Islamabad, or the prelude to the next escalation. The Rome round will decide which.