We're getting some new information this week on the state of Iran's nuclear enrichment efforts after the US and Israelis strikes on their facilities. One of the big outstanding questions at the time was what happened to the roughly 900 pounds of 60% enriched uranium Iran had already produced. Today there are reports from Israel that some of that material survived and may be accessible.
Israel has concluded that some of Iran’s underground stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium survived American and Israeli attacks last month and may be accessible to Iranian nuclear engineers, according to a senior Israeli official.
The senior official also said that Israel had begun moving toward military action against Iran late last year after seeing what the official described as a race to build a bomb as part of a secret Iranian project...
In a briefing for reporters on Wednesday evening, the senior Israeli official did not express concern about the assessment that some of the stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, stored in casks, had survived the attack. The official, and other Israelis with access to the country’s intelligence findings, said any attempts by Iran to recover it would almost certainly be detected — and there would be time to attack the facilities again.
Western intelligence officials confirmed the Israeli assessment, saying that they believed much of the stockpile was buried under rubble in Iran’s nuclear laboratory at Isfahan and potentially other sites.
There were reports immediately after the bombing that trucks had been seen at Isfahan before the US bunker buster bombs were dropped. There was also concern that the relatively small amount of enriched uranium could be taken away in a handful of cars. And the IAEA previously suggested that may have happened.
...the Israeli assessment differs from the conclusion of Rafael Grossi, the secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr. Grossi has said he believes that much of the stockpile that was stored at Isfahan was transferred from the site before Israeli and American weapons struck. The senior Israeli official contends that nothing was moved.
But both Israel and the US sound confident that didn't happen. The casks containing the uranium may still be intact underground but they didn't get out of the facility and they won't be easy to reach where they are. However, on Tuesday France's spy chief offered a different take. First he said that the Iranian nuclear program had been "extremely delayed."
Speaking to France's LCI broadcaster in his first remarks since the bombing raid, Nicolas Lerner, the head of DGSE intelligence service, said Tuesday that various stages of Iran's nuclear program had been damaged.
"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged," he said. "The nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months," he added.
But on the question of the enriched uranium, Lerner seemed to be agreeing with the IAEA that some of was buried or destroyed in the attack but the rest was already in the hands of Iran.
Lerner also told the channel that a small part of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed but the rest remained in the hands of authorities...
"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.
Obviously these two stories don't quite add up. France seems to believe Iran has most of it in hand right now while the US and Israel believe it's buried and would be difficult to recover. If the Israelis are correct then we should be able to prevent Iran from getting to the uranium by keeping an eye on their attempts to dig it up and bombing the site again if needed. But if it's floating around somewhere unknown then we won't know what to watch and that could mean trouble.
