𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will work with Iran to retrieve and destroy its highly enriched uranium if he is able to cut a deal with Tehran to end the three-month-old war between the countries — or, in the absence of an agreement, that he will further degrade the Iranian military to the point that American forces can safely collect the material on their own.

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“If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on-site or whether we take it off-site,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“And we will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us, okay?” Trump said. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”

Trump also said the U.S. could monitor the activity because it has “cameras up in space” thanks to his Space Force.

“You know, we have cameras on it, all over it. If anybody walked there, if you walked over there, I would be able to read your first name on your lapel,” he told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. “And these are cameras up in space. It’s pretty amazing technology.”

In his most detailed remarks to date about the status of negotiations for a permanent halt to the conflict and his approach to a potential deal, Trump said he is looking to keep U.S. troops deployed in the region until “completion” and said, “I don’t consider them in danger.”

The two sides are “very close” to signing a pact, Trump said, but he is pushing for Iran to go further in abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

“We have a couple of points. They don’t even seem like big points,” he said. “They’ve conceded the fact that they will not have nuclear weapons. We had a clause in there that [they] will not develop nuclear weapons. And everybody was very happy with it except me.”

Trump said he wanted an additional provision to ensure Iran can’t execute an end-run around a deal.

“And I said, ‘Well, what happens if they, not develop, but they go out and purchase, they acquire? I want to put the word, if they buy, purchase or acquire,’” he said. “You know, you’ve got to have that in there, too, because that’s not developing. So, they don’t have the right to develop or purchase, acquire or buy.”

He added that the Iranians pushed back “a little bit” on his demand. “And then they didn’t.”

Trump said that he is finding Iran’s new leadership to be “more rational, very smart” after attacks by Israel and the U.S. killed former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many of his lieutenants. Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has taken his father’s place and is “part of” the approval process for a deal, Trump said, adding that he is open to direct talks with the new supreme leader.

“I would if he’d like to,” Trump said, “but I have not spoken to him directly.”

The president favorably compared Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war began, to his father.

“Younger. I think more rational,” Trump said. “Injured. He’s pretty badly injured. So there’s a certain bravery there. A lot of people, if they were injured that badly, they wouldn’t be talking about, you know, ‘How are we doing with the United States?’ They’d have other things on their mind. So there’s a certain bravery there. But he is very seriously injured.”

Trump declined to say definitively whether he knows the Iranian leader’s exact location or whether that location is in Iran.

“I don’t want to say whether or not I know where he is,” Trump said. “But there’s a good probability that I do.”

The interview was set in a barn with a metal roof and took place before Trump appeared at a roundtable discussion devoted to the farming industry. A rainstorm pelted the roof, delaying the interview repeatedly, and a technical issue caused another interruption. Trump ended the interview about 50 minutes after sitting down, after becoming visibly frustrated during a back-and-forth over election interference and his criticizing the press.

The war has proved unpopular, with polls consistently showing a majority of the public opposes it. Sixty-eight percent of adults said the U.S. “should make a deal to end the war in Iran as quickly as possible” in an Economist/YouGov survey released this week, including 55% of voters who favored Trump in the 2024 election. Trump campaigned that year in part on the reminder that he had started “no new wars” in his first term.

But the president suggested in the interview that Americans should have more patience with Iran, adding that part of the challenge in turning around a quick peace plan is that it requires a full reversal in Tehran’s longtime stance toward the U.S.

“Because they’re strong. They’re proud,” he said of the Iranians. “There are things they never thought they’d be doing that they’re going to have to do. They’ve got no choice. And it takes a little while. You know, you’re talking about 47 years of getting away with whatever they wanted.”

His predecessors are to blame, Trump said, for Iran’s development of a nuclear-weapons program. Under President Barack Obama, a six-nation negotiating team struck a deal with Iran to limit its development of nuclear weapons in exchange for an easing of international sanctions that freed up frozen Iranian money. The parties to that agreement, in which Iran exported almost all of its uranium, disassembled most of its centrifuges and allowed international weapons inspections, included China and Russia.

Trump, who tore up that deal during his first term, said that any new agreement with Iran will not unfreeze any of its assets immediately.

That “comes after,” Trump said. “Yeah, if they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking.” He criticized Obama for delivering cash to Iran — a reimbursement for a never-completed arms sale — shortly after the original nuclear deal was signed.

The $400 million shipment was a tiny slice of the overall windfall for Iran from unfreezing its assets. Trump had promised to replace Obama’s pact with one that had better terms for the U.S. during his first term, but he said in the interview that he doesn’t regret failing to do so at the time.

“They weren’t ready,” he said. “No, this is much better.”

Welker pressed Trump on why he didn’t negotiate a new agreement with Iran at that time; he suggested that such deals can take “years.”

“It takes years to do these things,” he said. “These people have been fighting for 47 years. They’ve been killing Americans. They’ve been taking off their legs and their arm, and their faces have been hurt so badly and so horribly.”

For the time being, Trump said he has no plans to withdraw U.S. troops, even amid a fragile and frequently violated temporary ceasefire and even though he assesses that Iran’s defensive and offensive capabilities have been deeply degraded.

“Look, we have totally destroyed their military,” he said. “They have some missiles left. They have some drones left.” He added that he believes Iran has just “21%, 22%” of its pre-war missile stockpile remaining.

But that doesn’t mean the 50,000 U.S. troops deployed to the region are coming home soon.

“It costs us very little to keep them there,” Trump said, later adding: “I would say it would be foolhardy to do that because maybe we may use them” to force Iran’s hand at the negotiating table.

“It’s unlikely,” he said. “But I think we’ll keep them there until such time as we have a completion.”

That, he argued, would be a boon to the American economy, which has seen consumers suffer from higher prices at the pump because of a shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, a transit channel for about 20% of the world’s oil. Trump said the costs to Iran are “not sustainable” because “they have an economy that’s shot.”

Meanwhile, Trump touted the U.S. economy, calling the jobs report released the day of the interview “really strong.” But he said he was forced to make a choice to confront Iran and see prices rise in recent months as a result.

“Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could’ve kept it that way,” Trump said. “But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmers are going to understand it better than anybody. We’re going to have higher gasoline. We’re going to have a little higher fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m going to get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people.”

Americans will see relief when the war is over, he said.

“And when we have a completion,” Trump said, “you will see things like you’ve never seen. The oil will go down.”

“But the main thing is we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “Can’t do it. And we won’t do it.”