US President Donald Trump is believed to have refused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s offer to shift Iranian enriched uranium to his nation as part of a deal to end the West Asia war.
This information comes even as an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan air base destroyed five American mid-air refueller planes stationed there.
According to American media reports, Trump had a phone call with Putin, when the latter proposed to move out the enriched Uranium from Iran to Russia to meet the US demand so that the war in West Asia could be ended.
However, Trump refused the offer from Putin, though the US-Israel objective in this war was to secure and seize Iran’s 450 kg of 60%-enriched uranium enough to make over 10 nuclear bombs.
Putin’s offer could indeed, in theory, have gotten the Iranian nuclear stockpile removed without any American or Israeli soldiers entering the Iranian territory.
Russia, a nuclear power, has previously stored Iran’s low-enriched uranium under a 2015 deal, making it one of the few countries with the technical capacity to do so.
During the phone call, Putin is said to have made several proposals for ending the West Asian war, including the proposal to remove the enriched uranium from Iran.
“This is not the first time it has been offered. It hasn’t been accepted. The US position is that we need to see the uranium secured,” American publication Axios said, quoting an unnamed American official.
Russia had previously put forward similar suggestions during the US-Iran nuclear negotiations in May 2025, and before the June 2025 US-Israel joint military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, apart from weeks before the current war began on February 28.
The report said during the current rounds of negotiations in Geneva, Iran had rejected the idea of transferring its enriched uranium to Russia and instead proposed diluting the uranium in its facilities under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision.
It is not clear if Iran is currently willing to do as Putin proposed, even as Trump had said in an interview with an American television news channel that securing Iranian enriched uranium was not his present focus but might consider it sometime later.
He also, for the first time, claimed that Russia was aiding Iran in the present West Asia war by providing intelligence on American targets in the region.
“I think (Putin) might be helping them a little bit, yeah. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?” Trump said in that interview.
Iran Hits American Mid-Air Refuellers in Saudi Air Base
Meanwhile, Iran hit and destroyed five US Air Force mid-air refueller planes on the ground at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan air base, another American publication reported.
The attack on the American military assets in Saudi Arabia is a major escalation of the West Asian military conflict that began after the US-Israel airstrikes inside Iran on February 28, which killed its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The air strikes by Iran on the US jet fuel-carrying aircraft took place recently, but there were no casualties in the attack, an unnamed official was quoted as saying.
The five aircraft, though damaged, were repairable, and the latest attack came after a USAF KC-135 refueller had crashed in western Iran on Thursday (March 12).
The US Central Command confirmed the refueller crash that killed all six crew members on board.