Trump: Iran Has Oil, Doesn’t Need Uranium Enrichment
WANA (Feb 28) – U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that Iran has no need to enrich uranium because of its vast oil reserves, despite having signed orders earlier this year to expand uranium enrichment in the United States.
Speaking on Friday, Trump repeated his assertion that Iran’s energy resources negate any justification for enrichment activities.
“They want to continue some enrichment,” Trump said. “When a country has that much oil, it doesn’t need enrichment at all. So I’m not satisfied with these negotiations.”
Trump’s remarks come months after he signed executive orders aimed at expanding uranium enrichment and nuclear energy development in the United States.
Oil vs. Enrichment Debate
On his first day back in office, Trump declared a national energy emergency, citing rising electricity demand driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.
At the time, the U.S. Energy Secretary described efforts to expand energy production and AI-related data centers as “Manhattan Project 2” — a reference to the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program during World War II that developed the atomic bomb.
The United States remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons in wartime, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also led early nuclear weapons testing, conducting more than 200 tests by the end of the 1950s and building a stockpile that peaked at over 31,000 warheads during the Cold War.
Trump’s directive to expand nuclear energy use comes despite significant growth in renewable energy production in the United States over the past decade. The U.S. is also one of the world’s largest oil producers, with an estimated 264 billion barrels of recoverable resources, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Criticism of Iran Talks and Obama-Era Deal
Trump also addressed ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran, claiming that Tehran has not provided the response Washington is seeking.
“We’re negotiating right now, but they’re not giving the right answer,” he said. “We’re not going to allow what’s been happening for the past 47 years to continue.”
He again criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was signed during the presidency of Barack Obama.
“The Obama deal was the worst deal possible. Nobody has ever seen a deal that stupid,” Trump said, arguing that if the agreement had remained in place, Iran would have obtained a nuclear weapon. He also described the deal as short-term and flawed, saying it would have already expired even if he had not withdrawn from it.
Trump formally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018, asserting at the time that renewed sanctions would quickly bring Iran back to the negotiating table for a “stronger and better” agreement.
Nuclear deal negotiators pose for a photo at the UN building in Vienna, Austria. Social media/ WANA News Agency
