Status of Iran's near-bomb grade uranium looms over IAEA

Jonathan Tirone, Bloomberg News on Jun 16, 2025

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The United Nations atomic watchdog convened an emergency meeting to assess Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, along with their disruption on oversight of the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of near-bomb grade uranium.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board meets Monday in Vienna, just days after a divisive vote that found Iran in non-compliance with its legal obligations. Less than 24 hours after the resolution passed, Israel began bombing the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear sites, assassinating scientists linked to the program and striking residential areas of its capital, Tehran.

IAEA monitors remain in Tehran and will resume inspections “as soon as safety conditions allow,” Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement, which urged both sides to exercise “maximum restraint.”

The conflict has dramatically complicated the IAEA’s ability to account for Iran’s stockpile of highly-enriched uranium, which could quickly be turned into the fuel for 10 warheads, should Tehran’s government opt to pursue nuclear weapons. Until the attacks began, IAEA inspectors were conducting more than one visit a day to Iranian nuclear sites, keeping track of uranium inventories to gram levels.

Damage to above-ground structures at Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility has resulted in localized radiological contamination, Grossi said, while noting the plant’s vast underground halls haven’t been breached. Iran’s heavily-fortified Fordow enrichment site shows no sign of damage, he added.

Iran has implemented “special measures” to protect its uranium stockpiles and enrichment machinery, Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state television over the weekend. “We will no longer cooperate with the agency as we did before,” he said, adding Iran would consider specific IAEA requests for access.

Iran’s 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of highly-enriched uranium could fit in three or four easily-concealed cylinders, according to Robert Kelley, a nuclear-weapons engineer and former IAEA inspector. Even if Israel destroys Iran’s enrichment infrastructure, the location of that material will still need to be verified.

The IAEA’s sudden inability to fully account for Iran’s nuclear stockpile has added an additional layer of complexity to the conflict.

Now, “Iran has every incentive to breakout and perhaps the time to produce the material it needs,” wrote Richard Nephew, who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal that capped Iranian enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief.

“If you don’t solve for that, I don’t know what you’re doing,” he wrote on X.