WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance said Monday that he believed Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is buried beneath three nuclear facilities bombed by the US over the weekend — though other officials and experts fear that the theocratic regime may have stashed the nuclear fuel just before the attack.
“Our goal was to bury the uranium, and I do think the uranium is buried, but our goal was to eliminate the enrichment and eliminate their ability to convert that enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon,” Vance told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier when asked if the US knew the location of Iran’s roughly 400kg — or about 882 pounds — of uranium enriched to 60% purity.
That is below the weapons-grade uranium threshold of 92% purity, but experts say the nuclear fuel currently held by Iran could be used for nefarious purposes.
Earlier Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi warned that “at this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage” at Iran’s notorious Fordow nuclear site, and demanded that the United Nations organization’s inspectors be given access to “account for” what remains.
Meanwhile, even the most up-to-date intelligence officials are left to guess what may have happened to the material.
A key piece of evidence: Open-source satellite images taken on Thursday and Friday showing more than a dozen cargo-style trucks lined up outside the gates of Fordow.
Grossi himself stated Monday that Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araqchi had warned on June 13 that Tehran would take “special measures” to protect its nuclear equipment and materials.
“We do have indications, or at least the Iranians are saying they have moved or did move this material,” Annika Ganzeveld, Iran team lead at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, told The Post.
“I think this could be interpreted as Iran trying to move that material ahead of a potential strike — especially on Fordow, given that this happened right after the Israeli air campaign started.”
“This uranium can be easily stored and transported in trucks and trains across Iran,” added Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “The substance is produced in one facility, shipped off to enrichment plants, and then moved for processing somewhere else.”
Even if Vance is right that the uranium is buried, that does not allay experts’ concerns.
Should the uranium have remained, according to Ganzeveld, it could have survived the attacks and remained “entombed” long enough for Iran to wait out the latest Middle East conflict.
“I think the concern is that Iran could agree to allegedly stop uranium enrichment on Iranian soil,” she said, “but then secretly uses this uranium to advance its nuclear program.”
Still another possibility, according to Middle East foreign policy expert Harley Lippman, is that Iran entrusted the uranium to another US adversary.
“It could be hidden again. Perhaps Russia, China and North Korea could help Iran reconstitute their nuclear program,” Lippman said during a call with reporters arranged by the America-Middle East Press Association. “Maybe they’ll store enriched uranium in North Korea, China or Russia for Iran.”
There’s another, more nightmarish scenario: That the nuclear material was smuggled out and transferred to terror groups for a potential dirty bomb — though three nuclear experts told The Post that the possibility is unlikely.
However, DC-based nuclear expert Steve Nelson told The Post that Iran’s uranium is unlikely to be used in such a capacity — unless it could be enriched past 90%.
“Enriched uranium makes a really crappy dirty bomb,” said DC-based nuclear physicist Steve Nelson, noting that such a weapon would have to be very large.
“You can find stuff 10,000,000 times hotter from a hospital — not an exaggeration.”
