As US-Iran peace negotiations continue to falter and the fragile ceasefire appears increasingly uncertain, discussion is reportedly intensifying in Washington and Jerusalem over one of the most dangerous military options imaginable: a direct ground operation inside Iran to seize or secure the country’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) stockpile.
In recent days, both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have publicly alluded to the possibility of physically removing Iran’s enriched uranium, a move that would likely require elite special operations forces operating deep inside hostile territory.
The statements come amid growing concern in both capitals that previous attempts to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program through airpower alone have failed to eliminate the country’s uranium reserves, which Western intelligence agencies believe remain intact and dispersed across heavily fortified facilities.
Speaking to reporters last week, Trump suggested the United States was closely monitoring Iranian nuclear installations and warned of overwhelming military retaliation against any hostile movement near those sites.
“We’ll get that at some point… We have it surveilled,” Trump said. “I did a thing called Space Force, and they are watching that… If anybody got near the place, we will know about it — and we’ll blow them up.”
While Trump stopped short of explicitly confirming preparations for a ground raid, Netanyahu was far more direct during an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Asked how Israel and the United States could ultimately secure Iran’s uranium stockpile, the Israeli prime minister responded bluntly: “You go in, and you take it out.”
When pressed on whether that would involve Israeli or American special forces, Netanyahu declined to discuss operational details but strongly implied that military planners were considering such an option.
“Well, I’m not gonna talk about military means,” Netanyahu said. “But what President Trump has said to me, ‘I want to go in there.’ And I think it can be done physically. That’s not the problem. If you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out, why not? That’s the best way.”
According to a May 11 report by Axios, Israeli officials have urged Trump to authorize a joint special forces mission to secure Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. The report added that the US president remains hesitant because of the extraordinary risks associated with such an operation.
The growing debate follows the apparent failure of previous US airstrikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear material. In June 2025, the United States launched Operation Midnight Hammer, a massive bombing campaign targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including facilities at Fordow and Natanz.
The operation involved seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropping 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, among the most powerful bunker-busting weapons in the US arsenal. The bombs were specifically designed to penetrate deeply buried facilities before detonating.
Despite the scale of the attack, subsequent intelligence assessments reportedly concluded that the strikes failed to eliminate Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Western estimates suggest Iran currently possesses more than 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. While not yet weapons-grade, that material is considered only a short technical step away from the 90 percent enrichment typically associated with nuclear weapons.
Experts believe the stockpile could theoretically provide enough material for more than ten nuclear warheads if further refined.
The uranium is believed to be stored across several heavily defended sites, including the Isfahan complex and underground facilities built deep within mountainous terrain. That geography significantly complicates any military effort to destroy or remove the material.
As a result, some strategists in Washington and Jerusalem reportedly believe that airpower alone may no longer be sufficient and that a physical seizure operation could eventually become unavoidable.
Supporters of such a mission often point to historical precedents in which the United States successfully secured or removed nuclear materials from unstable or hostile environments.
One of the earliest examples dates back to the closing stages of the Second World War.
By mid-1944, Allied forces had landed in Normandy and were advancing across Western Europe, while the Soviet Red Army pushed toward Berlin from the east. Although the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union were wartime allies against Nazi Germany, competition quickly emerged over who would first capture Germany’s nuclear assets, scientists, and research infrastructure.
At the time, American officials feared Nazi Germany might be ahead in the race to build an atomic bomb. German scientists such as Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker were regarded as world leaders in nuclear physics, and Germany had already achieved the first successful splitting of the uranium atom in 1938.
In response, the United States launched Operation Alsos in 1944 as part of the broader Manhattan Project effort.
The mission combined military personnel, intelligence officers, and scientists tasked with tracking the German nuclear program and securing its assets before Soviet forces could reach them.
General Leslie Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan Project, reportedly emphasized the strategic urgency of capturing German nuclear facilities and materials ahead of Moscow.
Alsos teams entered Germany in early 1945 and eventually seized more than 1,100 tons of uranium ore from a salt mine near Stassfurt, along with heavy water, reactor prototypes, scientific documents, and leading German nuclear researchers.
Many historians argue that these captured resources contributed significantly to the success of the Manhattan Project, which culminated in the first successful US nuclear test in July 1945 and the subsequent atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month.
Nearly half a century later, the United States carried out another major nuclear extraction operation following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 1994, amid fears that nuclear materials in former Soviet republics could fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups, Washington launched Project Sapphire in Kazakhstan.
The operation targeted nearly 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium stored at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk.
US officials feared the material could be stolen or purchased by countries seeking nuclear weapons capability, including Iran and North Korea.
A covert American team composed of nuclear specialists and Pentagon personnel secretly entered Kazakhstan aboard a C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft. Over several weeks, the team repackaged the uranium under strict secrecy before flying it to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee for down-blending under International Atomic Energy Agency oversight.
The mission is still regarded as one of the most successful nonproliferation operations in modern history.
Similar efforts followed in later years. In 2003, the United States removed nuclear-related equipment and materials connected to Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan proliferation network after Libya agreed to dismantle its weapons programs.
More recently, the United States and the IAEA coordinated the transfer of enriched uranium from Venezuela’s shutdown RV-1 research reactor to a secure facility in South Carolina.
Supporters of a possible Iran operation argue these examples demonstrate that dangerous nuclear materials can be secured and transported safely under the right conditions.
However, military analysts caution that Iran presents a dramatically different challenge.
Unlike Kazakhstan, Libya, or Venezuela, Tehran is not cooperating with Washington. Iran possesses substantial conventional military capabilities, extensive underground infrastructure, regional proxy networks, and a demonstrated willingness to retaliate forcefully against foreign attacks.
Any attempt to insert American or Israeli commandos into Iran to seize uranium stockpiles would likely require massive air support, electronic warfare, intelligence coordination, and possibly prolonged ground combat.
The operation could also trigger a broader regional war involving Iranian missile strikes against US bases, attacks on Israeli cities, or disruption of Persian Gulf shipping routes.
Critics warn that even if special forces successfully reached the uranium sites, extracting hundreds of kilograms of sensitive nuclear material from fortified underground facilities under combat conditions would be extraordinarily difficult.
There are also concerns that Iran could disperse the uranium before any raid begins or booby-trap facilities to prevent capture.
Nevertheless, some policymakers in Washington and Jerusalem reportedly believe they may eventually have little choice.
Both Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly described Iran’s uranium stockpile as a central strategic threat and a core objective of their broader confrontation with Tehran.
If Iran refuses to surrender or dismantle its enriched uranium reserves voluntarily, and if bombing campaigns continue to prove insufficient, pressure for direct action could intensify.
For now, no official decision on a ground operation has been announced.
But as diplomacy weakens and military options narrow, the possibility of US and Israeli forces putting “boots on the ground” inside Iran is no longer being discussed solely in theoretical terms.
