menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Where Is Iran’s Enriched Uranium?

38 0
30.04.2026

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the status of Iran’s nuclear program, an expanding separatist threat in Mali, and former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s ongoing legal saga.

Iran is believed to have around 972 pounds of highly enriched uranium stored across the country. On Tuesday, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog suggested that roughly half of this stash still resides in Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility—despite U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming that U.S. strikes on that and other sites nearly a year ago “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the status of Iran’s nuclear program, an expanding separatist threat in Mali, and former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s ongoing legal saga.

Iran is believed to have around 972 pounds of highly enriched uranium stored across the country. On Tuesday, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog suggested that roughly half of this stash still resides in Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility—despite U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming that U.S. strikes on that and other sites nearly a year ago “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.

According to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 18 blue containers believed to be carrying roughly 440 pounds of enriched uranium entered a tunnel at the Isfahan complex on June 9, just four days before Israel’s 12-day war against Iran began. Less than two weeks later, U.S. forces targeted three Iranian nuclear facilities, including Isfahan.

Grossi said that, based on satellite imagery, this uranium—believed to be enriched up to 60 percent purity, just shy of 90 percent weapons-grade levels—is likely still at Isfahan. “We haven’t been able to inspect or to reject that the material is there and that the seals—the IAEA seals—remain there,” Grossi told The Associated Press. “I hope we’ll be able to do that, so what I tell you is our best estimate.”

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whose five-year review is currently underway at the United Nations, Iran as a signatory is required to grant IAEA inspectors access to its facilities. However, IAEA inspections of Isfahan ended after the June attack.

Iran’s nuclear program was a primary reason why the........

© Foreign Policy