What occurs to Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, together with the 970 kilos that it has extremely concentrated to near-weapons grade, is one of the main sticking factors as the US and Iran have trudged by weeks of negotiations to doubtlessly end the Iran war.
President Donald Trump has insisted that Iran should hand over what he calls its “nuclear dust.” Iranian officers have repeatedly stated that the nation has a proper to a non-weapons nuclear program.
But what’s in Iran’s stockpile, and what does it imply for Iran’s skill to construct a nuclear weapon?
With the proper tools, the extremely enriched uranium that Iran has may attain weapons-grade purity inside weeks and even days, in accordance to nuclear consultants. And it’s sufficient for 10 nuclear weapons, worldwide inspectors say.
Iran and the US are reportedly close to an agreement to formalize a ceasefire and open the Strait of Hormuz. But the query of what occurs to the uranium would stay unsettled and a key part of subsequent negotiations, in accordance to NCS’s reporting.
Those talks would probably focus on the practically 1000 kilos of uranium purified to 60%.
“The US shouldn’t take a deal that doesn’t include removing the [highly enriched uranium],” stated Eric Brewer, a nuclear supplies knowledgeable for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) nonprofit who beforehand oversaw counterproliferation at the National Security Council throughout Trump’s first administration and led Iran intelligence evaluation for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Building a nuclear weapon requires a vital quantity of radioactive heavy components, or what consultants name fissile materials. One such radioactive isotope, uranium-235, happens in nature, nevertheless it makes up lower than one % of uncooked uranium ore that’s mined.
Enrichment concentrates the uranium-235 from uncooked ore and prepares it for conversion into weapons-usable fissile materials. Iran enriched its uranium by changing it into a gasoline — uranium hexafluoride — and spinning it in a sequence of centrifuge machines in underground crops primarily at the nation’s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes.
Iran’s near-half ton of 60% enriched uranium (and its estimated 405.9 kilos of 20% U-235) is believed to stay in gasoline type, because it was at the time of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s last verification in June 2025. Iran shut out worldwide nuclear inspectors the following month in the wake of joint US-Israel airstrikes on its services.
Further enrichment to 90% purity, thought-about the threshold for weapons-grade uranium, would “only take days to weeks” if Iran has an operational enrichment facility, Brewer stated.
The June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear services, what the Pentagon termed Operation Midnight Hammer, was assessed by US intelligence to have buried a lot of Iran’s extremely enriched uranium stockpile at Isfahan, however didn’t destroy it, regardless of administration statements that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.”
Earlier this month Trump threatened “to go in” with power and retrieve the uranium ought to negotiations fail. NCS reported in March that army planners had reviewed choices for such an effort at the Isfahan advanced, assessing that it may require a whole bunch if not hundreds of troops and danger a excessive quantity of casualties. In addition to bringing in specialised forces and tools to deal with the materials itself, creating a safety perimeter to enable these troops to work would imply a massive footprint.
Nuclear consultants are additionally skeptical that a US army operation may even find and confirm all the uranium, a lot much less safely and fully take away it. Doing such a removing below hostile circumstances can be unprecedented.
“We don’t know where Iran could have dispersed some of this [uranium] material ahead of the strikes,” stated Brewer.
It’s unclear if Iran at present has the functionality of turning its 60% uranium gasoline into metallic as wanted to produce a nuclear warhead, however earlier than the 2025 strikes it did have the proper varieties of services, Brewer stated.
It’s additionally not clear how shortly the Iranian regime may resume and full weaponization work, which incorporates fashioning the bomb’s core and creating the explosives required to detonate it. When China accomplished its uranium enrichment in 1964, it solely required “three to five weeks to convert [the gas to metal] … and assemble an atomic bomb,” Harvard physicist and China nuclear knowledgeable Hui Zhang wrote for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists final yr.
Scott Roecker, who served as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Nuclear Material Removal and now oversees the NTI’s nuclear supplies safety program, informed NCS that eradicating even Iran’s low-enriched uranium together with greater than 13,000 kilos of 5% enriched materials could also be needed to forestall future nuclear weapons work.
That’s as a result of Iran has developed the expertise and expertise to produce superior centrifuges that may shortly and effectively enrich the uranium additional.
While Iran has insisted that it has not been pursuing a nuclear weapon, Roecker stated its extremely enriched stockpile is telling.
“There’s no plausible civilian purpose for that material,” he stated, including that the “main focus” of US negotiations needs to be getting rid of it.
There are two main choices for eradicating or in any other case neutralizing Iran’s stockpile, in accordance to Roecker and Brewer.
A primary frequent step between them probably can be changing from uranium gasoline to an “inherently more stable” powder type, Roecker stated, making transport considerably safer.
In the case of a peaceable removing led by the US, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has a cellular uranium facility that may deploy from its house at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee, to anyplace in the world and “stabilize, package, and remove nuclear materials,” in accordance to an agency fact sheet. That course of would probably take weeks.
Russia can also be succesful of accepting enriched uranium, because it did below the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Roecker famous.
A second choice, often known as “downblending,” may happen on Iranian soil. Downblending would contain diluting extremely enriched uranium with low-purity uranium to scale back its U-235 focus.
The key to any profitable removing, regardless of the technique, is the skill for the US and the worldwide neighborhood to monitor and confirm the course of.
Brewer stated that verification might be difficult even when Iran absolutely cooperates.
“You run the risk of … Iran saying, ‘We can’t account for that 100 kilograms [of uranium] because it actually blew up in the strikes,’ and you’re never going to know if that’s true or not, right?” Brewer stated.
Davis Winkie’s work at NCS is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). NCS retains full editorial management of the reporting.