President Donald Trump said Thursday that only the United States and China have the capability to retrieve enriched uranium from Iran's deeply buried nuclear sites, while maintaining that recent U.S. strikes severely damaged the facilities and made any recovery effort difficult.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said the targeted nuclear sites were "obliterated" by U.S. military action.

"We attacked their nuclear sites, and they were obliterated," Trump said.

He also pushed back on media reports questioning the extent of the damage.

"It turned out that, you know, CNN was wrong. They said, 'Well, maybe they weren't hit that hard.' They were hit so hard, nobody knows if you could even get it out," he said.

Trump said the United States and China are the only countries with equipment powerful enough to reach material buried beneath the sites.

"But the only ones that have the capability of getting it out are us and China," Trump said.

"We're the only ones with that kind of equipment that's powerful enough to go down that deep into a mountain, but that mountain crushed it."

"That mountain literally collapsed on top of it," he added.

Trump also cited assessments from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, saying the agency's findings support the view that recovering material from the sites would be extremely challenging.

"And now the atomic energy, as you know, has backed us up on that. They think it's a very, very hard thing to get to, but we'll get it anyway. But we're the only ones — and China, I believe, does, too — that have the capability," he said.

The president did not provide additional details about the specific equipment required to retrieve the material or explain how the United States could recover it if access remains difficult.

His comments came amid ongoing scrutiny of the impact of U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear infrastructure and questions about the condition of any remaining enriched uranium at the targeted facilities.