Trump suggests he wants Iran's uranium only for 'public relations'

US President Donald Trump suggested that hunting down Iran's enriched uranium was primarily for political optics, after Israel demanded it as a goal.

"I just feel better if I got it, actually, but it's -- I think, it's more for public relations than it is for anything else," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview from China broadcast late Thursday in the United States.

"The other thing we could do is bomb it again," Trump said. "But I, just, I would feel better getting it and we will get it."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who alongside Trump ordered an attack on Iran starting February 28, said in a recent interview that the war was "not over" because the sensitive nuclear material "has to be taken out" of the country.

Trump in June last year ordered the bombing of three key nuclear sites in Iran at the end of a previous round of Israeli bombing of the cleric-run country.

Trump declared that the sites were "completely obliterated" -- an assessment he repeats, despite also justifying this year's war on allegations, not backed by UN nuclear inspectors, that Iran was close to building an atomic bomb.

Iran has not confirmed the location of its highly enriched uranium, which some experts believe could be buried deep underground, making the task of seizing it prohibitively difficult without precise intelligence.

Iran began enriching uranium at higher levels -- near but not at weapons grade -- after Trump walked out of a 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated by former president Barack Obama.

The question of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile has long been sensitive because higher enrichment levels — even if still below weapons-grade — significantly shorten the theoretical “breakout time” needed to produce a nuclear device.

As a result, tracking where that material is stored, how much exists, and under what oversight has been a recurring flashpoint in negotiations, inspections, and regional security planning.

Trump’s remarks come as debate intensifies over whether diplomatic pressure, military leverage, or symbolic demands are most effective in shaping Iran’s behaviour, particularly at a time when Israel has been pushing for firmer, more visible guarantees that Tehran’s nuclear capacity can be rapidly neutralized if needed