President Donald Trump has revealed that he is not ruling out sending American troops on the ground in Iran to retrieve and destroy its highly enriched uranium.

As the conflict in Iran has persisted for over three months, Trump said that he thinks an end is near, as long as a ceasefire holds.

Part of a deal between the United States and Iran may involve sending US forces to retrieve what Trump called ‘nuclear dust’, in a conversation with NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker.

‘Will you, and would you be open to sending in US forces to retrieve the nuclear stockpile?’ Welker probed the Commander in Chief in an interview that aired Sunday.

Trump responded, ‘Yeah. So the official name is highly enriched uranium. And I call it nuclear dust because it seemed to be nice, and everyone understands it better, and it’s sort of cute, and people picked it up.

‘But the way you do it is if we make a deal, if we make a deal now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s onsite or whether we take it offsite,’ he continued.

Still, the President insisted that US troops would not be in harm’s way, even if they are sent to Iran, insisting that he will diminish Iran’s military strength enough for American personnel to safely retrieve the material themselves.

‘We will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us, okay?’ Trump stated, ‘Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.’

As a result of Operation Epic Fury, 13 American service members have already lost their lives.

The monetary cost of the war also keeps growing. Less than a month ago on May 12, Pentagon comptroller Jules Hurst told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the war at the time had cost the US at least $29 billion, up from an earlier $25 billion estimate given by the Pentagon in April.

Welker additionally probed Trump on why the US even intervened in Iran in the first place, particularly as he campaigned on a promise to end ‘endless wars’, as well as ‘no new wars’.

‘Well, well. First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world,’ Trump stated in response to Welker’s inquiry.

After a testy exchange, Trump added, ‘When you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. 

‘We’ve been doing this for three months. Much of it has been under the form of a pretty good form of ceasefire. The blockade has been amazing,’ Trump concluded, before pivoting his answer to the US engagement in Venezuela instead of the conflict in Iran.

The United States military shot down on Saturday two Iranian one-way attack drones that threatened maritime traffic over the Strait of Hormuz in the latest test of a fragile ceasefire in the Middle East conflict.

‘American forces remain postured and ready to continue defending against Iranian aggression,’ US Central Command wrote on social media Saturday evening.

The action came after the US shot down four Iranian drones headed for the waterway on Friday and then targeted some of Iran’s coastal radar sites in retaliation.

Earlier Saturday, Iran fired ballistic missiles and drones toward Bahrain and Kuwait that were eventually intercepted, Bahrain’s government said.

Tehran said that it had targeted American military assets in both countries, after the US attacked surveillance facilities on Qeshm Island and near Sirik that Iran said were used to protect borders and ‘ensure the security of navigation in international waters.’

Iran called the attack a ceasefire violation.

The latest exchanges came as the Trump administration presses Iran to make a deal to end the war, which has strained the global economy.