‘I don’t care about that’: Trump moves the goal posts on Iran’s uranium stockpile

More than a month into the war in Iran, there’s still great uncertainty about why the United States launched this military offensive in the first place. There’s reason to believe, however, that the conflict has something to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

At an unrelated White House event on Tuesday, for example, Donald Trump said“I had one goal: They will have no nuclear weapon, and that goal has been attained.”

It was a curious comment, in part because by the president’s own assessmentIran didn’t have a nuclear weapon before he decided to launch the war, and in part because Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week presented the administration’s four major objectives in the conflict, none of which had anything to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

As for whether Trump’s newly manufactured “goal” has actually been “attained,” The New York Times reported“Unless something changes over the next two weeks — the target Mr. Trump set to begin withdrawing from the conflict — he will have left the Iranians with 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough for 10 to a dozen bombs. The country will retain control over an even larger inventory of medium-enriched uranium that, with further enrichment, could be turned into bomb fuel, if the Iranians can rebuild that capacity after a month of steady bombing.”

The American president has acknowledged that these details are true, though he apparently no longer cares. Ahead of an Oval Office address to the nation about the war in Iran, the Republican spoke to Reuters about his perspective:

Of the enriched uranium, Trump said: ‘That’s so far ⁠underground, I ​don’t care about that.’

‘We’ll always be watching it by satellite,’ he added. He said Iran was ‘incapable’ of developing a weapon ​now.

The president’s comments definitely have a practical element: It’s been an open question for weeks as to whether Trump intends to try to seize Iran’s uranium stockpile, which would require ground troops and be profoundly dangerous for U.S. military service members.

If Trump told Reuters the truth and is prepared to let Iran keep the uranium it already has because he no longer “cares about that,” it would drastically reduce the likelihood of a ground invasion — one that would almost certainly cost lives.

But there’s another element to this worth keeping in mind as the process moves forward: Ever since the Obama administration struck the original nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015, Trump has insisted that it was wrong to allow the country to hold onto nuclear materials that might someday be used in a nuclear weapon.

A decade later, he’s suddenly indifferent to Iran’s uranium stockpile — which has only grown larger since Trump abandoned the Obama-era policy.

Trump’s goalposts, in other words, are on the move.

Indeed, if the American president’s comments reflect his true perspective (and with this guy, one never really knows), we’re due for a serious public conversation about the motives and objectives for the war. Because as things stand, before the war, Iran had a regime run by radical religious clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard; the country had a significant uranium stockpile; and the Strait of Hormuz was open.

And now, Trump’s apparent vision for a successful offensive will include Iran with a regime run by radical religious clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard; the country still holding a significant uranium stockpile; and the Strait of Hormuz will be open.

Mission accomplished, I guess?

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”