I Spent Two Decades Securing Nuclear Materials. Getting at Iran’s Would Not Be Easy.

Mr. Weber was the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological programs from 2009 to 2014.

Since the United States and Israel began their most recent bombing campaign in Iran, President Trump has mused about a quick military operation to secure or eliminate Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

I spent more than two decades extracting weapons-grade materials from unstable parts of the globe. It would be next to impossible for American and Israeli Special Forces to land in hostile territory and easily extricate or destroy Iran’s fissile material. To be sure that its highly enriched uranium is identified and disposed of would require a large and prolonged on-the-ground military presence, or the cooperation of Iran’s government.

Learning the nature of nuclear materials and their locations often takes months of diplomacy. In Kazakhstan, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, I had to go on a moose-hunting trip in the Altai Mountains with Vitaly Mette, the director of a factory where fissile material was stored. I bonded with him in naked bathhouse sessions and over shots of Wild Turkey whiskey. Weeks later, after I had gained Vitaly’s trust, a burly former K.G.B. colonel took me for a walk in a snowy courtyard outside Almaty; he passed me a note from Vitaly that read, “U 235, 90%, 600 kg.” This meant that Vitaly had a cache of uranium, highly enriched to 90 percent concentration of its highly fissionable element — sufficient for about two dozen nuclear weapons.

After getting permission from Kazakhstan’s president to inspect the material, the Defense and Energy Departments had to conduct months of detailed planning. It took about six weeks — even with a team of U.S. specialists working overtime with the factory staff — to package the fissile material for safe transport before flying it out on Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo planes. We had a relatively cooperative government on the ground, but the logistics simply took time.

For 20 years after this episode, I was involved in similar operations to remove fissile material from Georgia, nuclear-capable MiG-29 aircraft from Moldova, 1,300 tons of chemical weapons materials from Syria and other missions to move or eliminate components of weapons of mass destruction programs. All of them took meticulous planning, troubleshooting and concerted diplomacy.

The best estimates indicate that Iran has more than 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, much of it stored at its nuclear facility near the central Iranian city of Isfahan, which includes a tunnel complex buried deep underground. My experience tells me that removing that material from Isfahan, and anything relevant stored in other locations, would be extremely difficult without a cooperative government. The United States and Israel have extraordinarily capable Special Operations units. But they can do only so much so quickly.

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