Questions Linger About Iran’s Enriched Uranium Stockpile After U.S. Airstrikes

The location of some enriched uranium is still in question after the U.S. bombed three key nuclear facilities in Iran, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and experts on arms control and global security.

At a press conference during the NATO summit in The Hague on June 25, President Donald Trump was asked whether there was any indication that Iran was able to move enriched nuclear material from its targeted sites before the U.S. airstrikes. Trump said, “No, just the opposite. We think we hit them so hard and so fast that they didn’t get to move. … If you knew about the material, it’s very hard and dangerous to move. Many people call it dust. But it’s very, very heavy, very, very hard to move, and they were way down. They were 30 stories down.”

Asked the same question at a June 26 press conference, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise.“

But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that Iran may have relocated some of its enriched uranium after Israel began its airstrikes and before the U.S. attack on June 21. Grossi said that Iran had sent a letter to the IAEA on June 13 warning that Iran would adopt “special measures” to protect its nuclear equipment and materials, the Guardian reported.

“They did not get into details as to what that meant, but clearly that was the implicit meaning of that, so we can imagine that this material is still somewhere in Iran, Grossi said.

Israeli officials said there was evidence that Iran had moved uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the U.S. attack, the New York Times reported on June 22.

Satellite images released by Maxar Technologies, “at the tunnels leading into the Fordo mountain, taken in the days before the American strike, show 16 cargo trucks positioned near an entrance,” according to the Times, which also noted it was “unclear” what might have been removed from the site.

Responding to the reports about those satellite images, Trump said in a June 26 Truth Social post, “The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was removed from the facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”

The Financial Times reported on June 26 that preliminary assessments shared with European governments “indicate that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact following US strikes on its main nuclear sites,” and that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium “was not concentrated” at the Fordo plant when the U.S. bombs hit the site. The intelligence assessments said the stockpile “had been distributed to various other locations,” the Financial Times also reported.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, previously told us it is “now quite clear that the Iranians, in anticipation of the U.S. attack, removed” a stockpile of nearly 900 pounds of uranium “enriched to 60%,” as well as other equipment from at least one of the nuclear sites. “This is the material that could be further enriched to bomb grade (90%) and provide enough raw material for about 10 nuclear devices; which would according to U.S. intel before the strikes take another 1-2 years to fashion into warheads small and light enough to be delivered via a ballistic missile.”

Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told NPR on June 22, “Today, [Iran] still has that material and we still don’t know where it is.”

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, and Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at the institute, posted an assessment on June 24 of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities, saying they “have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack. That being said, there are residual stocks of 60 percent, 20 percent, and 3-5 percent enriched uranium, as well as centrifuges that have been manufactured but not yet installed at Natanz or Fordow. These non-destroyed parts pose a threat as they can be used in the future to produce weapon-grade uranium.”

We don’t know if Iran was actively working or planning to build a nuclear weapon. The U.S. Intelligence Community in late March assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” But Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, noted that “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

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-- By Jessica Perry

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