U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the signing ceremony for an executive order on mail ballots, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 31, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci/File Photo
Experts are blasting President Donald Trump’s “high-risk” commando raid plan to build a runway in Iran to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile.
“The U.S. military has given the president a plan to seize nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium in Iran that would involve flying in excavation equipment and building a runway for cargo planes to take the radioactive material out,” reported the Washington Post, citing two sources. “The complex plan was briefed to the president in the past week after he asked for a proposal, they said, as were its significant operational risks.”
“This would be one of, if not the largest, most complicated special operations in history,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and retired CIA and Marine officer, told the Post. “It’s a major risk to the force.”
The operation, never before attempted during wartime, would take weeks and “would require the airlift of potentially hundreds or thousands of troops and heavy equipment to support the excavation and recovery of radioactive material.” Those troops would be subject to being under fire inside Iran.
Asked about the plan, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not appear to deny the Post’s reporting, stating: “It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the Commander in Chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the President has made a decision.”
Last month, Brendan P. Buck at The Cato Institute wrote of an apparently similar idea, stating that in “reality, the so-called ‘commando option,’ while perhaps technically feasible, would be extraordinarily risky, operationally complex, and unlikely to accomplish its stated mission.”
The Trump plan was quickly denounced.
Foreign policy and defense expert Ilan Goldenberg, who has extensive government experience covering Iran’s nuclear program according to his bio, slammed the plan.
“An operation to seize Iran’s HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] by force is the worst of all the bad ideas that are on the table right now,” wrote Goldenberg, a former advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. “I cannot see this being a realistic military option.”
“Every single thing about this idea screams disaster, to the point where I wonder whether even Trump could be this dumb,” wrote Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.
“If Trump goes ahead with this and it’s a high-casualty debacle what do you think he’d do then?” asked Mike Prysner, executive director at the Center on Conscience & War. “Take the L and deescalate? A ‘commando raid’ would only remain as such if it was a huge success.”
“This zero dark thirty: uranium plan is so goofy,” declared author Adam Johnson. “Everyone knows they cant possibly get it all. At best it’s a delusion / distraction for our idiot president, at worst it’s a pretext for a regime change invasion designed to create hostages and deaths to rally public sentiment.”
“Feels like Trump wants his version of the Bin Laden raid, and he’ll take on enormous risk–or, more accurately, he’ll place that risk onto U.S. military forces–to get it,” noted Jacob Stokes of the Center for a New American Security.