Where is Iran's uranium and can Tehran still build a bomb?

The National

4 days ago

Iran will not be able to make a nuclear bomb 'for years' even if it has managed to hide enriched uranium from airstrikes, experts have told The National.
They have concluded that the damage inflicted by US bombers to the Fordow plant, where centrifuges could enrich uranium to a high enough purity for a bomb, will have severely dented its capabilities.
However, following reports that Iran has managed to smuggle all 400kg of its 60 per cent enriched uranium out of Fordow, there are fears that this would allow the regime to resurrect its nuclear programme once the bombing stops.
The stakes in what happens next to the residual programme could not be higher. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy warned that 'strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon'.
In a statement to parliament he added that 'once you have the ability to enrich uranium to 60 per cent that knowledge is not lost, it is the step to an advanced weapon'.
He also called for Tehran to 'dial this thing down and negotiate' as the alternative was 'even more destructive and far-reaching conflict, which could have unpredictable consequences'.
Years out
Clearing some hurdles to weaponisation will have become harder. Without getting the uranium to 95 per cent enrichment it is impossible to create a chain reaction and a nuclear explosion, said nuclear weapons specialist Hamish de Bretton Gordon.
'Turning that enriched uranium into weaponised uranium at 95 per cent would require a facility with centrifuges and all the other paraphernalia,' he said.
'These are very complex pieces of equipment and you need the knowledge to make them work. My assessment is that Iran doesn't have the capacity to make a nuclear device and is unlikely to do so for some considerable time, for years.'
IAEA nuclear inspectors have suggested that Iran would 'adopt special measures' to protect its programme in the event of war and that the regime had already notified them of a new enrichment site which they were due to inspect before the Israeli attack began.
But Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, also suggested that the American bombing had now devastated the programme. 'Given the explosive payload utilized, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred,' he said.
Assassination effects
Intelligence reports suggest that Iran was probably on the cusp of being able to enrich uranium to 95 per cent within three days using the Fordow centrifuges, but with these now destroyed that will be difficult to restore.
Israeli intelligence is reported to know that Iran has some highly enriched uranium secretly hidden, probably in Isfahan, which was one reason for their bombing campaign.
Iran will also need to rebuild new facilities which, while this could take months it will be compromised by many of the parts needing to be imported with intelligence agencies on high alert to prevent it acquiring them again.
Furthermore, Iran has suffered the deaths of up to 17 nuclear scientists along with a lot of research papers and laboratories. While it will have some corporate knowledge left over this will be difficult to rebuild.
Labs gone
The main problem for Iran is that it needs to turn enriched uranium hexafluoride back into solid metal which requires the laboratories and factories that have now been extensively destroyed.
Furthermore, Israeli and US intelligence appears to have deeply penetrated the regime making it highly likely that Iran's enemies will know or find out where the uranium has been moved, if that has happened.
Mr de Bretton Gordon, a former British army colonel, admitted that 'you can hide uranium fairly easily as it doesn't emit really strong, powerful radiation' and if it was bombed it would cause very little radiation fallout.
But Dr Marion Messmer, nuclear expert at Chatham House think tank, argued that Fordow and other enrichment sites hit are unlikely to be the only ones in Iran.
She also argued that the attacks would 'embolden Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons as they will likely be seen now as the only security guarantee'.
Darya Dolzikova, a nuclear specialist at the Rusi think tank, added that the physical elimination of the programme's infrastructure and assassinations 'will not be sufficient to destroy the latent knowledge that exists in the country'.
Dirty bombs
At best Iran could rapidly produce an 'improvised nuclear device' using the 60 per cent enriched uranium but this would amount to no more than a 'dirty bomb' that would simply spread radiation around an area without particularly deadly effect.
Dr Messner argued that while a dirty bomb only required a conventional payload and some radioactive material this would go against Iran's goal of a strategic nuclear arsenal. 'Using some of its limited stockpile for a dirty bomb would be a waste,' she said. 'And the consequences of using a dirty bomb against Israel would also likely be very severe. A dirty bomb is not a deterrence capability.'