Where’s the Rest of Iran’s Uranium?

CIA expert says a newly covert Iranian effort to build a bomb would face many obstacles

Even with President Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire in the 10-day war between Israel and Iran, U.S. and European officials remain deeply concerned over Iran’s large undeclared stockpile of enriched uranium.

In 2019 Iran began enriching uranium at Fordow by feeding its centrifuges with uranium hexafluoride (UF6), “in the fourth step of reducing its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency said.

A few days before the U.S. attack on three major Iranian nuclear facilities, satellites photographed trucks at the Fordow enrichment plant loading up with Iran’s 408 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium. Iranian officials later confirmed the enriched uranium had been removed from Fordow and taken to a secret location. 

Vice President J.D. Vance and other senior administration officials, along with representatives of France of Britain, have voiced concerns that Iran, which also has a number of uninstalled advanced centrifuges, could further enrich the uranium to weapons-grade 90 percent, enabling Tehran to build a nuclear bomb despite the Israeli and U.S. attacks. 

But James Lawler, a former senior CIA officer whose 25-year career largely focused on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, says the extensive damage to Iran’s nuclear program so far makes such a development highly unlikely.

“Having the highly enriched uranium and the advanced centrifuges, while troubling, however, does not a nuclear weapons program make,” he told SpyTalk in an email.