Trump faces his most difficult Iran war decision: Will he deploy US troops to seize uranium?
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put US troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons?
Trump has offered shifting reasons for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon”.
The president has been more circumspect about how far he's willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran's weapons programme once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses.
Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummelled in US bombings Trump ordered last June that he had claimed “obliterated” Tehran's nuclear programme.
It's a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of US troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the US in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America's psyche.
At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they'll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the US and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran's enriched uranium even more critical.
That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponise its programme.
Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called Trump's confused and chaotic objectives.
“Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there -- securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence," said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, Republican allies of Trump stress that there are plans in place to deal with the enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, on Wednesday cited “a number of plans that have been put on the table”. He declined to elaborate.
Others acknowledged the complications of deploying troops into Iran.
“No one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It doesn't mean you can't. But no one's ever briefed me about it.”
Scott added it's not tenable to allow the stockpile to remain: “I think it would be helpful to get rid of it.”
Trump and his advisers are rigidly obtuse
Nearly three weeks into a conflict that's left hundreds of people dead, tested longtime alliances and brought pain to the global economy, Trump and his top advisers have been rigidly obtuse about their deliberations over Iran's uranium stockpile.
“I'm not going to talk about that,” Trump said last week when asked about the enriched uranium. “But we have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we're not finished yet.”
Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, Trump appeared to claim the strikes had already neutralised the threat. “They don't have nuclear potential," he said.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week that the administration sees no point in telegraphing “what we're willing to do or how far we're willing to go" while asserting "we have options, for sure.”
Experts say it's doable but won't be easy
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said that seizing or destroying the enriched uranium is certainly doable, if the president decides to go that route.
The US and Israeli forces have been making strides toward creating the conditions — namely, establishing total air superiority — that would allow for special operations forces operators, who are trained in blowing up centrifuges and dealing with nuclear material, to conduct such an operation if the president decides to go that route.
To be certain, a troops-on-the-ground effort is expected to be far more complicated than other recent high-profile, lightning-strike insertion operations, such as the January capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro or the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, Goldberg said. And the likely need to remove rubble to get to the canisters of enriched uranium adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment.
"But if you actually own the airspace and you can have close air support and drones and everything else up in the sky for pretty wide perimeter, presumably you could do a lot,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week that the assumption is much of the enriched uranium remains in the trio of Iranian nuclear sites bombarded last year by the US.
“The impression we have … is that it hasn't been moved,” said Grossi, adding that a bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Iran's Isfahan facility while lesser amounts are at the Natanz and Fordow facilities that were destroyed in last year's American strikes.
Testifying before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her prepared remarks said the US attacks on Iran had “obliterated” Iran's nuclear enrichment programme and buried underground facilities.
Gabbard said the US has been monitoring whether Iran's leaders will try to restart its nuclear programme but said that they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability. She added that the clerical authority overseeing Iranian government has been degraded in Israel's strikes on its leadership but remains intact.
Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute, said that an effort to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely take more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site and would take time to complete.
On the other hand, not acting to secure the enriched uranium also comes with risk. Should Iran's hard-liners remain in power, and with enriched material, they will now have greater motivation to build a nuclear weapon.
“Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place,” Buck said. “Throughout this, he has had maximalist aims, but he's wanted to maintain minimal effort in order to keep the costs low.”
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No unannounced load shedding in Kerala, outages due to overload, says Minister
Palakkad (PTI): Kerala Electricity Minister K Krishnankutty on Saturday said there was no unannounced load shedding in the state, attributing recent power interruptions to temporary overload caused by high consumption.
Clarifying concerns raised from various parts of the state, the minister said the disruptions are not deliberate but occur when demand peaks, particularly between 10 pm and 11 pm.
"It is not being done intentionally. Power consumption has risen sharply, and when there is excessive and indiscriminate usage, the system experiences overload, leading to natural supply interruptions," he told reporters here.
His remarks come amid complaints that several areas have been witnessing frequent power cuts, often lasting around 15 minutes and occurring multiple times during the night.
Krishnankutty said the state's power demand has crossed 6,195 MW, putting pressure on the supply system. He added that around 70 per cent of Kerala's electricity is procured from outside, and existing power banking arrangements have been exhausted.
"We have approached the Regulatory Commission seeking permission to purchase more power. However, this will come at a higher cost," he said.
The minister said the government is trying to avoid increasing electricity tariffs and urged consumers to exercise restraint in usage to help manage the situation.
Responding to opposition criticism over the ruling LDF's earlier claims of a decade without power cuts, he said the current situation is not unique to Kerala.
A power crisis is emerging across the country, he said, and sarcastically asked the Opposition to take note of the role of natural factors in this.
Krishnankutty expressed confidence that the situation would improve within two days, while cautioning that long-term energy security would depend on enhancing in-state power generation.
He also warned that future generations could face serious challenges if adequate electricity production capacity is not developed within Kerala.
