How Trump’s Plot to Grab Iran’s Nuclear Fuel Would Actually Work

President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly evaluating whether to send ground troops to Iran to recover the country’s highly enriched uranium. However, the administration has shared little information about which troops would be deployed, how they would recover the nuclear materials, or where the materials would go next.

“People are going to have to go get it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a congressional press briefing earlier this month, referring to a possible operation.

There are indications that an operation is on the horizon. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon plans to soon deploy 3,000 combat brigades to the Middle East. (As of this writing, the order has not been given.) The troops would come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint force entry operations.” The Iranian government on Wednesday rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president “is ready to raise hell” in Iran if a peace deal is not reached – a plan some lawmakers have reportedly expressed concerns about.

Drawing on publicly available information and their own experience, two experts have outlined the likely contours of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They tell WIRED that any version of a ground operation would be incredibly complicated and pose a huge risk to the lives of U.S. troops.

“Personally, I think a ground operation using special forces supported by a larger force is extremely, extremely risky and ultimately unfeasible,” Spencer Faragasso, a senior fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, told WIRED.

Nuclear ambitions

Any version of the operation would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that are not close to each other, experts say. Jonathan Hackett, a former Marine and Defense Intelligence Agency operations specialist, told WIRED that up to 10 sites could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak and Darkhovin research reactors; the Natanz, Fordow and Parchin enrichment facilities; the mines of Saghand, China and Yazd; and the Bushehr power plant.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which might be able to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, although weapons-grade materials are typically 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says the other two enrichment facilities could also contain 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and the power plant and three research reactors could contain 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that such supplies deserve special attention.

Hackett says eight of the ten sites – except Isfahan, which is probably intact underground, and “Pickaxe Mountain”, a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz – were largely or partially buried after air raids last June. Just before the war, Faragasso says, Iran backfilled the entrances to the tunnels leading to the Isfahan facility with earth.

The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve U.S. troops physically recovering nuclear materials. Hackett says this material would be stored as uranium hexafluoride gas in “large cement vats.” Faragasso adds that it is not known exactly how many of these tanks may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops are expected to bring excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving huge amounts of earth to recover it.

A comparatively less risky version of the operation would still require ground troops, according to Hackett. However, it would primarily use airstrikes to bury nuclear materials inside its facilities. Ensuring that nuclear materials are inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragasso says, would involve destroying entrances to underground facilities and, ideally, collapsing the facilities’ underground roofs.

Soften the area

Hackett told WIRED that, based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran are “probably a ruse” to buy time to move troops there.

Hackett says an operation would most likely begin with aerial bombardments of areas surrounding target sites. These bombers, he said, would likely come from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “rapid response” force, and the 31st MEU, the Marines’ only unit permanently deployed overseas in strategic areas, were both reportedly deployed to the Middle East.