About 970 pounds (roughly 440 kilograms) of uranium enriched to 60 percent - just short of weapons grade - remains stored in deep tunnels beneath Isfahan, and President Donald Trump has yet to decide whether to order the ground operation that would be required to retrieve it. The stockpile is large enough to produce ten or more nuclear weapons, and it sits at the heart of the rationale for the war itself.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged the challenge at the outset of the conflict. "People are going to have to go and get it," he said, alluding to a ground operation deep inside Iranian territory, "Hvylya" reports, citing The New York Times. Trump has said he is considering such an operation but is not ready to order it.
The technical obstacles are daunting. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, most of the enriched uranium is stored in gas form in canisters that could each fit in the trunk of a car. But the tunnels housing them were partially collapsed when the United States bombed the Isfahan facility last June. American and European intelligence agencies have been watching the site by satellite and say that while some access has been reopened, they see no evidence the fuel has been moved.
Special operations forces would face two possible approaches: a stealthy insertion hoping for quick access, or a massive protective force prepared to spend days or weeks extracting the canisters. Either way, the margin for error is almost nonexistent. If the canisters were pierced and moisture entered, the result would be both highly toxic and radioactive. If kept too close together during extraction, they could trigger a critical nuclear reaction.
The urgency has only grown as the war progresses. American officials say the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is more desperate than ever and may view keeping the nuclear fuel as leverage to force the United States to back down. When asked directly about seizing the material, Trump was noncommittal. "We haven't made any decision on that," he said. "We're nowhere near it" - a statement suggesting the war may have a long way to go.
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