Trump: Iran Uranium Retrieval Challenging, Not Worth Public Relations

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In two recent interviews, President Donald Trump admitted that there is no real reason to continue his war against Iran. Instead, in remarks that revealed both a clear understanding of certain facts and a narcissistic way of framing them, he said he couldn’t stop fighting now because of “public relations” and a vague need to “feel good.” On a Fox News show on Friday, host Bret Baier asked Trump whether it might be feasible to retrieve Iran’s enriched uranium. Trump replied that it would be very hard for either the Iranians or U.S. troops to get at the material because his attack last June—a bomber raid on three sites encased inside a mountain—left the “nuclear dust” (as Trump called it) buried under heavy granite rubble. “It was hit so hard,” Trump said, “the mountain literally collapsed on it.” This seemed to startle Baier. “Why isn’t that good enough?” the host asked. “If your goal was to set back …” “It is good enough,” Trump replied, “but you know what, it isn’t good enough public-relations-wise.” This wasn’t a one-time gaffe. In a separate Fox interview, aired on Thursday, Trump said, “We have nine cameras on that site, on those three sites, 24 hours a day. We know exactly what’s happening. Nobody’s even gotten close to it.” If the Iranians did try to dig out the material, Trump could bomb the sites again. One might infer, as Baier suggested in his Friday interview, that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are thus effectively contained. But then Trump went on, “I’d just feel better if I got it, actually”—that is, if he somehow removed, or if Iran agreed to remove, the uranium.  Then he added, digging himself into a deeper hole: “But I think it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else.” Let’s put this in some context. Trump has said he doesn’t care that the war is hurting the American people’s finances because it’s also preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. He has denounced all opponents of the war, including the Pope, saying that they are in effect condoning a nuclear-armed Iran. And yet, in two Fox interviews, he admitted that there’s no way Iran can build a nuclear weapon as long as their enriched uranium is buried under a mountain, which we have under constant watch, meaning that, if they tried to dig out the material, we would bomb the mountain sites again. It would be good if Iran possessed no enriched uranium and no facilities for further enrichment. It would be good if a lot of scary things somehow vanished. But sometimes this is impossible or too costly, in money and lives, to pull off. This is where smart diplomacy, backed by a credible, proportionate threat of force, sometimes comes in handy. The United States has the resources for this sort of diplomacy well in hand. It has many ways—besides perpetuating an illegal, devastating, and self-destructive war—to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The only obstacle is Donald Trump, who thinks it would be better for public relations and his own feelings to pursue more violent options, even though that route has so far led nowhere.