ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, March 8 — US President Donald Trump evoked Saturday the idea of sending ground troops into Iran to secure the country’s stockpiles of enriched uranium, as part of efforts to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program.

“At some point maybe we will. That would be a great thing,” he told reporters during a briefing aboard Air Force One.

“We haven’t gone after it but it’s something we could do later,” he said.

Some critics of the US-Israeli war on Iran, launched last Saturday, have said air strikes alone are unlikely to achieve the stated goals of destroying Iran’s military capacity and preventing it from developing a nuclear bomb.

Asked about the use of ground troops in general, Trump did not rule it out, saying: “Could there be? Possibly, for a very good reason – it’d have to be a very good reason.”

“And I would say if we ever did that, they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level,” he said. — AFP