What you should know about the status of Iran’s enriched uranium after US strike

The United States deployed its B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to drop over 13,000 kilograms bunker buster bombs on Islamic country’s key nuclear sites, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. According to reports, Isfahan was also hit by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by an American submarine. These sites which Tehran has been using to produce highly enriched uranium have certainly suffered damage after the American strikes, but the critical question remains whether Iran’s nuclear programme was destroyed?

What is the status of Iran’s enriched uranium?

According to a Financial Times report, Iran had enriched 408 kilograms of Uranium to its 60 percent purity which is pretty close to the 90 percent purity required to develop a nuclear weapon. “It comes down to the material and where it is. On the basis of what we’ve seen at this point, we don’t know where the material is. We don’t have any real confidence that we’ve got the ability to get it any time soon,” said FT quoted Richard Nephew, a former senior US official who worked on Iran under former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as saying.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “no one will come to know for sure for days” whether Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed or whether the Islamic country was able to move the enriched uranium just in time. “I doubt they moved it, because you really can’t move anything right now,” Rubio told CBS News. However, an insider of the Iranian administration has said that it would have been “very naive” to keep the uranium at the same spot in those sites, and added that “the enriched uranium is untouched now.”

According to a New York Times report, Iran had moved its enriched uranium and equipment from its nuclear sites in recent days. The report, quoting two Israeli officials, claimed that there was evidence that Tehran had moved its 400 kg uranium, enriched to 60% purity, out of its nuclear sites. The decision to move the uranium was taken amid constant American threat of military action and Israel’s continued strikes in the region.

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