This has some serious prospects. As an example, the near Earth asteroid “433 Eros” just 34km x 11km x 11km, passes fairly near to Earth, and importantly, is believed to have more platinum group metals than the entire crust of Earth, along with other precious metals.
It is interesting enough so that NASA has already landed a probe on it.
The concept of mining it envisions landing a nuclear powered spacecraft on it, almost certainly manned at first, but later robotic, whose purpose would be to partially concentrate metals into a large ball of ores, with the most precious of them in its interior, and surrounded by a thick layer of less valuable ones.
Because 433 Eros is rotating, the best way to return such balls to Earth would be to attach a signalling device to them, then reel them away from Eros on a long cable, using the centrifugal force to accelerate it to a good speed, then releasing it from the cable in the direction of Earth, where it would be recovered when it intersected the orbital path and returned to the surface.
Shades of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Is there anyway we can aim one of these large balls at Iran, and just sort of "miss it" when it intersects the recovery area of our orbital path?