The High Risks Involved In Seizing Iran’s Hidden Uranium Stockpile

Any U.S. subject involution to unafraid Iran’s uranium stockpile would beryllium a complex, risky, and lengthy operation, fraught pinch radiation and chemic dangers, according to experts and erstwhile authorities officials.

President Donald Trump has offered shifting objectives for nan warfare successful Iran, but has many times said a superior purpose is to make judge Tehran “never person a atomic weapon.”

On Monday, it was reported that he is unfastened to nan thought of launching a subject cognition to prehend the country’s uranium, and is weighing up nan threat to U.S. troops.

Given nan risks of deploying up to 1,000 specially trained forces, a negotiated colony for nan material's surrender without unit offers a viable alternative.

Iran holds 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent purity, a short method measurement from weapons-grade 90 per cent arsenic reported by nan International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nan UN's atomic watchdog.

This stockpile could let Iran to build up to 10 atomic bombs, should it weaponize its programme, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said successful 2025, though he stressed it "doesn’t mean Iran has specified a weapon."

Iran maintains its programme is peaceful, contempt IAEA and Western assertions of an organized atomic weapons programme until 2003.

Material apt stored successful tunnels

IAEA inspectors person not been capable to verify nan adjacent weapons-grade uranium since June 2025, erstwhile Israeli and American strikes greatly weakened Iran’s aerial defenses, subject activity and atomic program. The deficiency of inspections has made it difficult to cognize precisely wherever it is located.

Grossi has said that nan IAEA believes a stockpile of astir 200 kilograms (about 440 pounds) of highly enriched uranium is stored successful tunnels astatine Iran’s atomic analyzable extracurricular of Isfahan. The tract was chiefly known for producing nan uranium state that is fed into centrifuges to beryllium spun and purified.

Additional quantities are believed to beryllium astatine nan Natanz atomic tract and lesser amounts whitethorn beryllium stored astatine a installation successful Fordo, he has said.

It's unclear whether further quantities could beryllium elsewhere.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a House proceeding March 19 that nan U.S. intelligence organization has “high confidence” that it knows nan location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles.

Radiation and risks

Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium fits into canisters each weighing astir 50 kilograms (110 pounds) erstwhile full. The worldly is successful nan shape of uranium hexafluoride gas. Estimates connected nan number of canisters scope from 26 to astir doubly that number, depending connected really afloat each cylinder is.

The canisters carrying nan highly enriched uranium are “pretty robust” and are designed for retention and transport, said David Albright, a erstwhile atomic weapons inspector successful Iraq and laminitis of nan nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security successful Washington.

But he warned that “safety issues go paramount” should nan canisters beryllium damaged — for example, owed to airstrikes — allowing moisture to get inside.

In specified a scenario, location would beryllium a hazard from fluorine, a highly toxic chemic that is corrosive to skin, eyes and lungs. Anyone entering nan tunnels seeking to retrieve nan canisters “would person to deterioration hazmat suits,” Albright said.

It besides would beryllium basal to support region betwixt nan various canisters successful bid to debar a self-sustaining captious atomic guidance that would lead to “a ample magnitude of radiation,” he said.

To debar specified a radiological accident, nan canisters would person to beryllium placed successful containers that create abstraction betwixt them during transport, he said.

Albright said that nan preferred action for dealing pinch nan uranium would beryllium to region it from Iran successful typical subject planes and past “downblend” it — operation it pinch lower-enriched materials to bring it to levels suitable for civilian use.

Downblending nan worldly wrong Iran astir apt is not feasible, fixed that nan infrastructure needed for nan process whitethorn not beryllium intact owed to nan war, he added.

Darya Dolzikova, elder investigation chap astatine nan Royal United Services Institute, agreed.

Downblending nan worldly wrong Iran is “probably not nan astir apt action conscionable because it’s a very analyzable and agelong process that requires specialized equipment,” she said.

‘High risk’ for crushed troops

Securing Iran's atomic worldly pinch crushed troops would beryllium a “very analyzable and precocious consequence subject operation,” said Christine E. Wormuth, who was caput of nan Army nether erstwhile U.S. President Joe Biden.

That is because nan worldly is astir apt astatine aggregate sites and nan undertaking would “probably return casualties,” added Wormuth, now president and CEO of nan Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The standard and scope of an cognition astatine Isfahan unsocial would easy require 1,000 subject personnel, she said.

Given that passageway entrances are astir apt buried nether rubble, it would beryllium basal for helicopters to alert successful dense equipment, specified arsenic excavators, and U.S. forces mightiness moreover person to build an airstrip adjacent to onshore each nan instrumentality and troops, Wormuth said.

She said typical forces, including possibly nan 75th Ranger Regiment, would person to activity “in tandem” pinch atomic experts who would look underground for nan canisters, adding that nan typical forces would apt group up a information perimeter successful lawsuit of imaginable attacks.

Wormuth said nan Nuclear Disablement Teams nether nan 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives Command would beryllium 1 imaginable portion that could beryllium employed successful specified an operation.

“The Iranians person thought this through, I’m sure, and are going to effort to make it arsenic difficult arsenic imaginable to do this successful an expeditious way," she said. "So I would ideate it will beryllium a beautiful painstaking effort to spell underground, get oriented, effort to discern ... which ones are nan existent canisters, which ones whitethorn beryllium decoys, to effort to debar booby traps.”

The measurement forward

The champion action would beryllium “to person an statement pinch nan (Iranian) authorities to region each of that material,” said Scott Roecker, erstwhile head of nan Office of Nuclear Material Removal astatine nan National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency wrong nan U.S. Department of Energy.

A akin ngo occurred successful 1994 erstwhile nan U.S., successful business pinch nan authorities of Kazakhstan, secretly transported 600 kilograms (about 1,322 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium from nan erstwhile Soviet republic successful an cognition dubbed “Project Sapphire.” The worldly was near complete from nan USSR's atomic program.

Roecker, now vice president for nan Nuclear Materials Security Program astatine nan Nuclear Threat Initiative, said nan Department of Energy's Mobile Packaging Unit was built from nan acquisition successful Kazakhstan. It has safely removed atomic worldly from respective countries, including from Georgia successful 1998 and from Iraq successful 2004, 2007 and 2008.

The portion consists of method experts and specialized instrumentality that tin beryllium deployed anyplace to safely region atomic material, and Roecker said it would beryllium ideally positioned to region nan uranium nether a negotiated woody pinch Iran. Tehran remains suspicious of Washington, which nether Trump withdrew from a atomic statement and has doubly attacked during high-level negotiations.

Under a negotiated solution, IAEA inspectors besides could beryllium portion of a mission. “We are considering these options, of course,” nan IAEA's Grossi said March 22 connected CBS' Face nan Nation erstwhile asked astir specified a scenario.

Iran has “a contractual responsibility to let inspectors in,” he added. “Of course, there’s communal sense. Nothing tin hap while bombs are falling.”