Trump Says He Considered Special Ops Raid on Iranian Nuclear Sites but ‘Didn’t Want to Be Jimmy Carter’

President Donald Trump, on June 4, said he had considered ordering a special operations mission to recover stocks of highly enriched uranium from Iran, but elected not to because of the risks.

“I didn’t want to be Jimmy Carter,” Trump said.

His comment about Carter came as an apparent reference to the late president’s 1980 decision to order special operations forces to attempt to rescue dozens of U.S. citizens taken hostage in Iran.

That Carter-era rescue mission, known as Operation Eagle Claw, ended in failure after eight U.S. service members were killed in an accident at a mission staging site inside Iran.

Trump has consistently cited a desire to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as part of his justification for launching military operations against the Persian state.

Iran had enriched uranium to 60 percent purity, closing the distance to weapons-grade nuclear fuel, before Trump ordered U.S. forces to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.

Though the U.S. strikes damaged those nuclear facilities, concerns have continued to focus on whether Iran can still access stocks of highly enriched uranium that may be buried under the rubble.

Trump told reporters that he and his advisers considered a mission to retrieve the nuclear fuel in the lead-up to the recent joint U.S.–Israeli military campaign against Iran, which began on Feb. 28.

“We thought about it right at the very beginning, before we did what we did, before we destroyed their entire military,” Trump said.

The president isn’t entirely averse to sending special operations troops into harm’s way.

Less than two months before initiating the recent large-scale military operations across the Middle East, Trump gave the go-ahead for a team of elite U.S. troops to fly into the Venezuelan capital city of Caracas under the cover of night and capture then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face criminal prosecution in the United States.

Those U.S. forces who captured Maduro had the support of more than 150 U.S. military aircraft. Seven of the elite U.S. troops on that raiding team were injured in the Caracas operation.

Trump said a raid to recover Iranian nuclear fuel would’ve presented a far more complex challenge than the one to capture Maduro.

“It’s not like Venezuela, like you go in, you’re there for a matter of minutes, and you’re out. … This is different,” Trump said.

“You’d have to be there for two weeks. You’d need massive equipment. You’d have to airlift the equipment in.”

The president said U.S. forces remaining at the site during a lengthy excavation effort would present an enticing target for Iranian forces. The longer the mission lasts, the higher the risk of U.S. troops being killed.

“They still had missiles left. That means they would pinpoint you and just keep lobbing them in until one gets through, and people would have gotten killed,” Trump said.

Trump is instead seeking a diplomatic settlement that will see Tehran turn over control of Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

Last week, Trump described a potential deal in which Tehran would permit U.S. personnel to enter the country, unearth nuclear materials there, and destroy them. Thus far, no final deal has been reached.