President Trump said in a phone interview that Iran has “agreed to everything,” and will work with the U.S. to remove its enriched uranium.
He insisted that doing so will not involve U.S. ground troops. But when asked who would retrieve it, he would only say “our people.”
“No. No troops,” he said. “We’ll go down and get it with them, and then we’ll take it. We’ll be getting it together because by that time, we’ll have an agreement and there’s no need for fighting when there’s an agreement. Nice right? That’s better. We would have done it the other way if we had to.”
The president said the material would then be brought to the U.S.
“Our people, together with the Iranians, are going to work together to go get it. And then we’ll take it to the United States,” he said.
But within a couple of hours, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry released a statement that said in translation, “Enriched uranium is as sacred to us as Iranian soil and will not be transferred anywhere under any circumstances,” and went on to say that “transferring uranium to the United States has not been an option.”
The president also told CBS News that Tehran agreed to stop backing proxy terrorist groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas.
When asked when he would be announcing the deal, Mr. Trump said the two sides are meeting this weekend and that the U.S. would continue its blockade “until we get it done.”
Although Axios reported that the Trump administration was discussing the possibility of releasing $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for its nuclear stockpile, the president denied it: “No, we are not paying 10 cents.”
