President Trump on Thursday said the Space Force has “very powerful cameras” trained on Iran’s destroyed nuclear sites, scouting for any attempts Iran may take to break out the enriched uranium still buried deep below.
“Every inch of that land has cameras on it,” he said. “We have about nine of them, and they’re on, and we cover it. So, if anybody even got near it, we would know what we had to.”
He further brushed off the idea of the US imminently sending troops into those sites to retrieve the buried nuclear material — saying “we could get it right now” if he chose to go that route.
A satellite overview shows the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Facility, along with damage from June 23, 2025 airstrikes. via REUTERS“I don’t think [Iran] could stop us if we wanted, but there’s no reason to,” he said.
“We have very powerful cameras.”
The president said he considered sending troops on a secret mission to retrieve the uranium “right at the very beginning … before we destroyed their entire military.”
“There was a time, at the very beginning, when we thought about doing that, because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out,” he said.
But the president has since assessed that the buried uranium poses no immediate threat to the US, as the facilities in which they are held sit an estimated 260 to 330 feet below ground with no obvious ways Iran could get it without tipping off the Americans.
President Trump attends a Cabinet meeting discussing a potential agreement for a ceasefire with Iran amid ongoing diplomatic negotiations at the White House. Samuel Corum / Pool via CNP / SplashNews.comHe also explained that it would be a complex, lengthy ordeal to free the uranium — even for highly trained US special forces.
“It’s not like it’s not like Venezuela where you go in, you’re there for a matter of minutes and you’re out,” Trump said.
“This is different. You have to be there for two weeks, you’d need massive equipment. You’d have to airlift the equipment, and you know you’re in a war zone.”
An F-22 Raptor 4007 launching an AIM-9L Sidewinder missile during a test run at Edwards AFB, California. Darin Russell via Lockheed MartinThe president said such a measure would take “a period of a week to two weeks.”
“You would have had a major construction operation,” he said.
“We would have gotten it, but I said I don’t like the idea of that.”
Maxar Technologies detailing a satellite image on January 8, 2020, that displays an overview of Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP). Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Tech“They still had missiles left, that means they would pinpoint you and just keep lobbing them in until one gets through, and people would have gotten killed,” he added.
His remarks come a day after the White House slammed a Wednesday report by Bloomberg that claimed Iran was at a greater risk of obtaining a nuclear weapon than it was before the 2025 strikes destroyed Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure because nuclear regulators could no longer inspect them.
“Suggesting that Iran can more capably produce a nuclear weapon with no functioning nuclear enrichment facilities or military defenses is an indescribably stupid analysis by Bloomberg, which we would have shared had they reached out to us for comment,” White House deputy spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Post on Wednesday.
