Here’s Why Iran’s Unaccounted for Uranium Worries Experts
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. I'm Stephen Carroll and this is Here's Why, where we take one news story and explain it in just a few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg.

Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.

It was an unprecedented series of strikes against Iran's nuclear ambitions. The United States targeted facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in a 37-hour operation that included 125 aircraft, submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and 14,000 kilogram bombs.

While the effectiveness of those strikes is still being assessed, they've compounded another problem. The UN's nuclear inspectors don't know where Iran's highly enriched uranium is now. I'm not so sure. At a time of war, all nuclear sites are closed. So our inspectors, who are still, I must say,

That's the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi. So here's why Iran's unaccounted-for uranium worries experts.

Jonathan Turone, who covers nuclear diplomacy for Bloomberg, joins me now for more. Jonathan, first of all, how much uranium does Iran have and how dangerous is it? Iran has various stockpiles. The most concerning is the 409 kilograms of

of highly enriched uranium. That material is equivalent to the amount needed to make about 10 nuclear weapons if it was further enriched to 90%. That material was last seen a few days before Israel's bombing commenced on June 13th. It was stored in underground tunnels at Isfahan Complex. However, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA Director General, told us on June 18th that his inspectors had lost track

of that material. They were no longer to verify its location. The concern is compounded because even before the bombing began, Iranian diplomats had told the IAEA that if Israel indeed did attack, they would move that material to an undeclared location. So at this point, we don't have any visibility on

the inventory of nuclear material that was existing at the site before. But we're looking at about 10 days now of that material being out of contact with international verification measures. Why is it that we don't know more about where it is?

Well, before the bombing began, International Atomic Energy Agency monitors were in Iran every day. The IAEA has 274 monitors that are going in and out of Iran constantly. So all of that material was under what's called safeguards. They're under seal.

of the IAEA, the international community, and inspectors were going in and out of those facilities, inspecting an average of 1.4 a day last year. Once the bombing began, for obvious reasons, because the IAEA is not going to be entering onto a site under active attack,

Once the attacks began, you eliminated the ability to verify the location of that material. Compounding that problem is that Iran had informed the IAEA that if Israel did begin to attack, it would remove that material to an undisclosed location. And as of yesterday, the Iranians still had not told Iranians

the IAEA where they had put it. And, you know, just to go a step further, Iranians are also making a move to restrict IAEA movements in the country going forward. They're talking about leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the, you know, bedrock legal arrangement that imposes IAEA inspections in Iran. If Iran bars IAEA or

leaves the treaty, then we face the potential of losing sight of that 410 kilograms of highly enriched material that could be quickly turned into raw material for a long time. And that questions the metrics of success

for the attacks. So while there's no doubt that there was grave damage dealt to the above ground facilities, perhaps some of the underground enrichment facilities, the attacks did not take account of the existing inventory of Iran's nuclear material. I want to come back to the framework in a moment that underpins all of this that you mentioned. But

How far could this uranium have been moved in theory? How easily transportable is it? There's a vast body of scientific literature about the amount of material that can be packed into a canister when it's at that enrichment level because there are safety concerns about criticality incidents

Basically, that material is limited to a canister about the size of a scuba tank that can carry about 25 kilograms of this highly enriched uranium. That means for all practical purposes, an individual or a small vehicle could carry that out and spirit it away to an undisclosed location. The handling requirements of...

enriched uranium are not that complicated. It's only after the fuel has been irradiated instead of a reactor or in a bomb that you're facing a real radiological risk. So this is not a complicated task to bring those canisters out and put them into a place that has not been declared.

Let's return to the monitoring that was possible before this war erupted. How effective was that system thought to have been beforehand?

There was never a dispute about the declared nuclear material in Iran. The IAEA has been keeping track to gram levels of this vast volume of enriched material that Iran has. And let's not forget, it's not just the 409 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. They also have thousands of kilograms of lower enriched uranium.

uranium. So that was never the dispute. What was the dispute and the reason that Iran on June 12th was found in noncompliance of its safeguards agreements was because the agency had detected trace elements of uranium at several locations that had not been declared.

Now, these trace isotopes that were detected were decades of years old. I mean, they go back to the early 2000s. So this was not a smoking gun, so to speak. But the standards of verification are so high at the IAEA, not just in Iran, but in every country that

Any anomaly prompts an investigation, and the Iranians were not cooperating in this investigation. The Iranians considered that their cooperation leading into the 2015 nuclear agreement that the U.S. left in 2018 had sufficed, that it was under no obligation to continue cooperating in these old investigations.

And they were basically stonewalling the IAEA, which then resulted earlier this month in this finding of noncompliance. But in terms of like the actual enriched uranium, we've always had a good bead on what that inventory actually looks like. Okay, well, then I suppose what does the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the structure that underpins all of this inspection system, what does the future of that framework look like now?

Well, that's the good question. And frankly, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has been warning about this for months because it's been a slow motion train wreck in the eyes of people who are paying close attention to this. The Iranians have been warning, you know, for at least the last year that if this escalates diplomatically,

nevermind militarily, they were prepared to trigger their so-called Article 10 rights under the NPT that would give the IAEA a three-month notice that they were going to be withdrawing from that treaty. If they withdraw, that essentially ends IAEA inspections. And that is a massively escalatory move in light of the conflict we've just witnessed.

And let's not forget, I mean, even in the best case scenario where Iran remains within the treaty and inspections continue, it is going to take years for the IAEA to reestablish a material accountancy baseline. There's so much localized chemical and radiological hazards. It's going to take a while for them even to get back on site doing investigations, doing inspections.

And once they're in there, they're going to have to basically start from point zero and rebuilding their data on Iran's stockpile. This has caused a massively complex challenge to the non-proliferation regime. Okay, Jonathan Turan, our nuclear diplomacy reporter, thank you. For more explanations like this from our team of 3,000 journalists and analysts around the world, go to Bloomberg.com slash explainers. I'm Stephen Carroll. This is Here's Why. I'll be back next week with more. Thanks for listening.

For enterprise organizations, managing all your food needs is a tall order. But with EasyCater, you get a single workplace food vendor with the tools and resources to make it easy, giving teams across your organization an easy way to order from a huge variety of restaurants, all on one platform. All while consolidating your corporate food spend so you can control costs, streamlining billing and payment and simplifying reporting.

EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. Thrivent can help you plan your finances for the people, causes, and community you love. What makes Thrivent different? Financial services and generosity programs are combined to help you build a financial roadmap for the future.

while also creating opportunities to give back along the way. Visit Thrivent.com to learn more. Thrivent, where money means more. This is an iHeart Podcast.