Axios: Putin offered Trump to transport enriched uranium from Iran to Russia. Trump refused

Putin, during a phone call with the US President Donald Trump this week, offered to transport Iranian enriched uranium stocks to Russia as part of a deal to end the war in the region.

Axios writes about this with reference to sources.

Control of Iranʼs 450 kg of 60% enriched uranium is one of the key US and Israeli objectives in the war. Such uranium can be converted into weapons-grade uranium within a few weeks, enough for more than ten nuclear warheads.

Theoretically, Putinʼs proposal could help remove Iranian nuclear material without introducing American or Israeli troops into Iranian territory.

Russia is already a nuclear power and previously stored Iranian low-enriched uranium under the 2015 nuclear deal, making it one of the few countries with the technical capacity to accept such material. However, Putinʼs proposal was not supported by the US President Donald Trump.

"This is not the first proposal. It was not accepted. The US position is that we need to make sure that the uranium is protected," a US official told the publication.

Russia made similar proposals during US-Iranian nuclear talks in May 2025, before the US and Israel attacked three Iranian nuclear facilities in June.

These ideas were also discussed a few weeks before the start of the current war, which broke out in the Middle East after US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

In the last round of negotiations before the war, Iran rejected the idea of a transfer and proposed to enrich uranium at its own facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Meanwhile, the US and Israel discussed the possibility of sending special forces to Iran to secure its nuclear arsenals in a later phase of the war.

The US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that Washington has several options for gaining control over Iranʼs highly enriched uranium, including Tehranʼs voluntary abandonment of its own arsenals.

At the same time, in an interview with Fox News Radio, Trump suggested that uranium control is not a top priority at this time.

"Weʼre not focused on that right now, but at some point, maybe," he said.

• Earlier, Donald Trump also admitted for the first time that Russia could help Iran in the war. Before that, the media wrote that Moscow was providing Tehran with intelligence on the location of US troops in the Middle East for attacks, as well as providing tactical advice on how to use strike drones.

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