CNN’s chief international anchor pointed out that President Donald Trump appears to have abandoned one of his primary reasons for the Iran war.
After Trump’s address, in which he lied and said nothing new of value, Christiane Amanpour called attention to the president’s comments about enriched uranium. Trump said that, after strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, “it would take months to get near the nuclear dust,” suggesting the nuclear material is no longer a priority.
Amanpour responded, “If that 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium remains inside of Iran, that will mean one of their strategic objectives, the main strategic objective, has not been accomplished.”
“So,” she added, “I was waiting to hear whether there was any plans in that regard, and didn‘t hear it.”
Trump, in a Reuters interview earlier Wednesday, said the enrichment of uranium didn’t matter to him.
“That is so far underground, I don’t care about that,” he said, even though one of his justifications for the war was to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons with it.
Amanpour said “the most concerning thing” about Trump’s speech was the issue of the uranium.
“Everybody says [it] has been buried and would require a very, very highly specialized, difficult special forces operation to get,” she said. “And there seemed to be no indication of that. In fact, the president said that it would take months to get near what he called the ‘nuclear dust.’”
Amanpour also said Trump’s messaging on the Strait of Hormuz was “somewhat complicated.”
“The president basically said we don‘t need it. We‘d like to help others, but we don‘t need it. Why don‘t you buy U.S. oil? And then he repeated what he said before about NATO allies: Why don‘t you drum up some delayed courage? Just take it. The hard part is done, the rest will be easy. And then he said, but it will ‘open up naturally’ because Iranians want to sell oil,” Amanpour summarized.
“So, it wasn‘t clear whether there is a further strategic objective of trying to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is what everybody in the region wants, and most particularly the allies, American allies, especially in Asia, who are hit very, very hard,” she said. “A huge number of states of energy emergency have been implemented, and they‘re really having a tough time.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
