Donald Trump has stated he is unconcerned with Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, arguing its underground location and satellite monitoring capabilities render the issue unimportant, a position that has drawn scrutiny as one of the original justifications for the recent conflict.
Trump Downplays Iran’s Uranium Stockpile
Experts suggest that if the U.S.-Israeli offensive concludes with Iran still possessing its 440kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the country will be significantly closer to developing nuclear weapons than if the U.S. had pursued a negotiated settlement that was under discussion prior to the start of the war on February 28.
When questioned about the stockpile by Reuters, Trump said, “That’s so far underground, I don’t care about that.” He added, “We’ll always be watching it by satellite.”
During an address to the nation on Wednesday night, Trump further stated, “If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we will hit them with missiles very hard again.”
Trump’s remarks appear to rule out a military operation to retrieve the HEU stockpile, which is believed to be hidden in deep underground shafts. This decision seemingly contradicts his previous assertions that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon was a primary objective of the war.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, since initiating the war, that Iran was weeks away from developing and deploying a nuclear weapon against the U.S. and Israel, a claim widely dismissed by experts.
Nuclear proliferation experts believe that if the HEU remains under Iranian control, Tehran will be closer to nuclear weapons capability than it was during negotiations on February 26, two days before the war began. During those talks, Iranian officials reportedly proposed diluting the HEU stockpile to low-enriched uranium and maintaining a smaller stock of enriched uranium within its borders.
The Iranian proposal also included a multiyear pause in uranium enrichment and a restoration of comprehensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Omani mediators and the UK’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, who was present in Geneva with British nuclear experts, believed significant progress had been made.
A follow-up technical round of talks scheduled for the following Monday in Vienna was canceled when the U.S. and Israel launched their attack.
“We are actually less secure now from the nuclear threat than we were before he started the war, because they still have the material and we still have no greater insight into the material and what they might do with it,” said Emma Belcher, a nuclear expert and president of Ploughshares. She added, “We’ve also likely increased [Tehran’s] calculus that they will seek nuclear weapons to prevent the very kind of attack we’ve just witnessed.”
According to the IAEA, approximately 200kg of the 60%-enriched HEU is stored deep within shafts under a mountain near Isfahan. Satellite imagery from June of last year, published by Le Monde, showed a truck carrying blue containers, likely containing HEU, at a tunnel entrance at the Isfahan site.
Trump was briefed last week on a Pentagon proposal to secure and extract the HEU stockpile, according to the Washington Post. The operation would have involved securing an area in Iran’s mountainous interior, constructing a runway, and transporting the HEU out of the country, requiring hundreds or thousands of troops and posing significant risks. Trump’s recent comments suggest he deemed these risks unacceptable.
The HEU stockpile is a direct result of Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw from the multilateral nuclear deal, which had limited Iran’s uranium stockpile to less than 4% enriched. Iran resumed enriching uranium to 60% after the agreement collapsed.
“The comment that you can just not worry about the material because you can see it from satellites really fundamentally misunderstands how to manage nuclear risk,” Belcher said. “The issue isn’t just whether we can see the material, it’s whether we can verify, secure and constrain it. And in order to do that, you need diplomacy, inspections and sustained international cooperation.”
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