NEW YORK, June 10. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump recently floated the nuclear option regarding Iran in conversations with his administration officials, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative US journalist Seymour Hersh said on his blog on Substack.

According to him, nuclear weapons were mentioned in a conversation with high-ranking members of the Trump administration that occurred earlier this week.

The talk centered around strikes on underground missile production sites in Iran, and, in the course of the talks, the US leader asked whether using nuclear weapons to destroy some of these facilities "was doable."

Hersh wrote that at least one of those taking part in the meeting was shocked that an American president would talk so casually about the possibility of unleashing a nuclear war in the Middle East. In his words, Trump looked frustrated and angry during the conversation and, at that point, looked "desperate not to lose in Iran."

The US president’s idea was to warn Iran that Washington was "very seriously" considering such an option. Apparently, Hersh wrote, Trump was talked out of any thought of a nuclear escalation.