Where the Ayatollah could be hiding Iran’s uranium ...Middle East

Three days before Donald Trump ordered American jets to pound Iran’s Fordo nuclear complex with bunker-buster bombs, a convoy of 16 lorries was seen on satellite images arriving at one of the tunnels to the facility buried in a mountainside.

Analysis of the pictures suggested at least some of the trucks had come to dump aggregate in an ultimately forlorn attempt to reinforce what is regarded a key hub for the Islamic Republic’s programme of enriching uranium. Other vehicles, however, had arrived unladen and appeared to be tasked with removing material from the site.

Just what was removed has not been disclosed but according to experts – and the Iranian regime itself – it is a reasonable assumption that at least some of the highly-enriched uranium (HEU) hidden at Fordo was no longer there by the time Washington’s B2 bombers struck in the early hours of Sunday.

Prior to Israel’s decision to unleash Operation Rising Lion, its ongoing air campaign against Iran, it was known that Tehran had amassed a stock of more than 400kg of uranium enriched to levels slightly below that required to make a nuclear weapon.

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As Washington’s attempts to engineer an unexpected ceasefire remained in the balance on Tuesday, the current whereabouts of that material and the matter of what Iran’s leaders intend to do with it go to the heart of just how the crisis will now unfold. Stored as a powder in large cylinders of similar proportions to an immersion heater, Iran’s atomic cargo can fit into two large lorries so it could be hidden in many secret locations.

On the one hand, Tehran may decide to use what remains of its stockpile as a fissile bargaining chip in any attempt to reach a diplomatic solution over its nuclear ambitions.

Alternatively, the material also represents the very means by which the Islamic Republic may decide to defy Israel, America and the West by making a final dash to acquire an atomic weapon or even fashion it into a crude ‘dirty’ bomb.

The appropriation of uranium for nuclear use is an activity which has long obsessed Iran’s rulers and their Iranian programme has amassed a cache of some 8,400kg of uranium.

The vast majority of this is at a low-level of purity consistent with use as fuel in a civil nuclear reactor – the type of atomic activity which the regime has always insisted is its sole aim and purpose.

However, since 2019 Iran has steadily accelerated the processing of uranium to increase the material’s proportion of a fissile or more energy-dense isotope, uranium-235 – to a level of 60 per cent.

According to the most recent estimates, made in April this year, Iran now possesses some 408kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium manufactured at it nuclear sites.

Satellite imagery reveals 16 cargo trucks lined along the main road approaching the underground tunnel entrance of the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Facility. (Photo: Maxar/DigitalGlobe/Getty Images)

This is only marginally below the 90 per cent level required to form the core of a nuclear weapon.

In that vein, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a non-proliferation research body, has calculated that Iran could convert its 60 per cent enriched uranium into 233 kg of weapons-grade material (WGU) in about three weeks. Such an amount would suffice to make nine nuclear bombs.

In a briefing issued just days before the launch of Operation Rising Lion, ISIS said: “Even if one believed the production of 60 percent [uranium] is to create bargaining leverage in a nuclear negotiation, Iran has gone way beyond what would be needed. One has to conclude that Iran’s real intent is to be prepared to produce large quantities of weapons grade uranium as quickly as possible.”

Has Iran’s uranium stockpile survived the bombing and where might it be? 

Despite Donald Trump’s insistence on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear programme had been “completely and totally obliterated”, the White House has tacitly admitted it does not know the whereabouts of Tehran’s enriched uranium.

Vice President JD Vance told the American broadcaster ABC on Sunday: “We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranian’s about.”

For the Iranians themselves, the regime has been bullish in its insistence that its prized stockpile remains, to a greater or lesser degree, intact. Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and negotiator, who was claimed to have been killed in Israel’s strikes, tweeted on Sunday: “Even if nuclear sites are destroyed, [the] game isn’t over, enriched materials, indigenous knowledge, political will remain… Surprises will continue!”

Prior to the Israeli and American strikes, it was known that nearly all of Iran’s HEU was being held at Natanz, Fordo and a separate nuclear site at Isfahan, Iran’s second city.

However, it is thought highly likely that at least some of that material has been moved since before or after the Israeli strikes to ultra-secretive locations.

Professor Robert Pape, a specialist in security affairs and the use of air power at the University of Chicago, said: “If we are to assume that the Iranians are smart enough to understand that they need this material to meet their goals, then it is also the case they will understand the need to move that material elsewhere if it is at risk. The Iranians have watched the West for 20 years to understand that when you have a nuclear weapon, such as North Korea, your regime stays in place. And when you give them up, such as Ukraine did, you end up with 20 per cent of your territory being occupied.”

The working assumption in intelligence circles is that while Iran will have kept a significant quantity of HEU at Fordo, it will also have moved small parcels of contingency stocks – estimated to be about 25kg to 50kg at a time – to a range of alternative locations.

The uranium would not be difficult to hide. Put together, the entire Iranian stock would fit into no more than a couple of lorries and could be dispersed in a number of smaller vehicles. Similarly, it would be unlikely to require a vast new storage facility – an existing warehouse or small bunker could serve as a temporary location.

Among the possibilities is the theory that some of the enriched uranium could have been moved to a new Iranian nuclear facility buried even deeper under a mountain than the Fordow site. The regime has been quietly building the complex at Kolang Gaz La, or Pickaxe Mountain, to the south of Natanz, at a depth reputed to be considerably greater than Fordow – potentially putting it out of reach of even America’s 30,000lb bunker-buster munitions.

Crucially, the Iranian government has barred the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), from inspecting the Kolang Gaz La site on the basis that it has not yet been commissioned. It is also unclear whether this facility has been targeted in the Israeli or American raids.

As a Western security source put it: “Iran has spent decades developing its nuclear know-how – it has deep roots in the national psyche. So it should astonish no-one that they may have secret sites where they would be able to disperse and hide material such as 60 per cent uranium and advanced centrifuges in the knowledge that sooner or later someone might come after them.”

What might Iran now do with its enriched uranium? 

There seems to be little doubt that between them Tel Aviv and Washington have wreaked enough damage on Iran’s nuclear programme to set back its ability to enrich uranium at its previous pace by a number of years.

However, that does not address the high likelihood that significant quantities of enriched uranium remain within the possession of an Iranian regime.

If Tehran had managed to protect only a tenth of its HEU stocks, it would still have enough to produce two nuclear weapons at a clandestine site.

Iran has not only invested huge sums in the infrastructure required to join the nuclear club, it has also acquired a legacy of expertise that cannot be eradicated by the munitions of the Israeli and American air forces

Daray Dolzikova, a nuclear policy expert at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said: “Besides the actual physical capabilities, Iran retains extensive expertise that will allow it to eventually reconstitute what aspects of the programme have been damaged or destroyed. The physical elimination of the programme’s infrastructure – and even the assassination of Iranian scientists – will not be sufficient to destroy the latent knowledge that exists in the country.”

There are alternative outcomes.

Some analysts have suggested that instead of developing a fully-fledged atom bomb, Iran could instead fashion a so-called “dirty bomb” designed to contaminate a wide area with radioactive material.

However, should Iran’s theocracy reach the point where its very existence is imperiled, its uranium stockpile represents the sort of bargaining chip that could be surrendered in return for a grand deal which allows the regime to stay in place and sanctions to be lifted.

Others point out, however, that such a calculus currently looks less likely to tempt Tehran, not least because Israel, America and the West will almost certainly demand that Iran surrender its entire HEU stock and its ability to enrich uranium along with it.

As Professor Pape put it: “Unfortunately, we are far too late for air power to be the answer to this problem. My concern is that we will now be locked into a process of realising that we did not get all of Iran’s uranium, that we are not able to track its whereabouts and an ever-deepening sense of paranoia about just what they are doing with it.”

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