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Trump says Iran has ‘agreed to everything,’ will work with US to remove enriched uranium: ‘No troops’

April 18, 2026 | | Print Article

President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had “agreed to everything” that the U.S. had demanded of it, but Iran said otherwise.

Speaking with CBS News, the president said Iran had agreed to, one, stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah, and two, remove its enriched uranium.

Iran had “agreed to everything,” he said, adding that “our people” will help Iran with the removal and transportation of its enriched uranium to the United States — and all without any ground-troop involvement.

“No troops,” the president insisted. “Our people, together with the Iranians, are going to work together to go get it. And then we’ll take it to the United States.”

The president also stressed that a meeting between his team and the Iranian team was planned for the weekend and that the blockade against Iranians using the Strait of Hormuz would continue for the time being.

Trump also reiterated this in a Truth Social post:

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While speaking with CBS News, Trump also debunked a pernicious rumor being peddled by left-wing media propagandists like Matt Drudge that he’d agreed to unfreeze $20 billion in Iranian records.

“No, we are not paying 10 cents,” he bluntly stated.

Speaking separately with Reuters, the president spoke more about his plans to retrieve enriched uranium from the Iranians.

“We’re going to get it together. We’re ‌going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery… We’ll bring it back to the United States,” he maintained.

Iran has denied much of what Trump said.

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“Iran’s enriched uranium is not ⁠going to be transferred anywhere; transferring uranium to the United States has not been ​an option for us,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei reportedly said.

In posts published to the social media platform X, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament went so far as to accuse Trump of lying about everything and warned that Iran would keep the Strait of Hormuz closed so long as the U.S. maintained its blockade:

As of Saturday morning, the speaker’s threats appeared to be bearing fruit.

“Iran’s military says restrictions on the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz are being reimposed, alleging ‘repeated breaches of trust,'” CNN reported.

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“Unfortunately, the Americans, with their repeated breaches of trust that are part of their track record, continue to engage in piracy and maritime theft under the so-called title of blockade,” an Iranian military spokesperson told the network.

Trump, for his part, reportedly responded by saying that a thin ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran that’s currently active may not be extended if a final agreement isn’t reached by Wednesday.

As for the weekend peace talks that Trump had mentioned, those have evidently been moved to Monday.

According to the president, the key demand that he wants met is the elimination of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

“The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and that supersedes everything else,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to Fox News.

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He also said that Iran’s enriched uranium will be retrieved after a final deal is reached.

“Obviously, I’m not going to give you the time other than if we sign the agreement, then I can give you a time somewhere after the signing of the agreement,” he said. “We’ll go in with Iran and we will take it together, and we will bring it back — 100% of it — back to the United States.”

But he warned that if a deal isn’t reached, he’ll simply take the enriched uranium in an “unfriendly form.”

“If we don’t do that, we will get it in a different form, in a much more unfriendly form,” he explained. “But in any event, we’ll get it.”

Vivek Saxena
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