Where is Iran's uranium and can Tehran still build a bomb?

Experts say programme has been put back by years after damage to fragile equipment and murders of scientists

A woman holds a photo of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at an anti-US rally in Tehran on June 22. Analysts say Iran's nuclear ambitions have been set back years by US and Israeli bombing. APShow less

Iran will not be able to make a nuclear bomb “for years”, even if it has managed to protect its enriched uranium from air strikes, analysts have told The National.

They have concluded that the damage inflicted by US bombers to the Fordow plant, where centrifuges could enrich uranium to a high enough purity for a bomb, will have severely damaged its capabilities.

However, following reports that Iran has managed to remove 400kg of its 60 per cent enriched uranium out of Fordow, there is a belief that it would allow Tehran to continue its nuclear programme once the bombing stops.

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The stakes in what happens next to the residual programme could not be higher. Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that “strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon”.

In a statement to Parliament he added that “once you have the ability to enrich uranium to 60 per cent that knowledge is not lost, it is the step to an advanced weapon”.

He also called for Tehran to “dial this thing down and negotiate” as the alternative was “even more destructive and far-reaching conflict, which could have unpredictable consequences”.

Years out

Steps to weaponising uranium will have become harder for Iran. Without getting the uranium to 95 per cent enrichment it is impossible to create a chain reaction and a nuclear explosion, said nuclear weapons specialist Hamish de Bretton Gordon.

“Turning that enriched uranium into weaponised uranium at 95 per cent would require a facility with centrifuges and all the other paraphernalia,” he said.

“These are very complex pieces of equipment and you need the knowledge to make them work. My assessment is that Iran doesn't have the capacity to make a nuclear device and is unlikely to do so for some considerable time, for years.”

IAEA nuclear inspectors have suggested that Iran would “adopt special measures” to protect its programme in the event of war and that the regime had already notified them of a new enrichment site which they were due to inspect before the Israeli attack began.

But Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, also suggested that the American bombing had now devastated the programme. “Given the explosive payload utilised, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred,” he said.

Rafael Grossi, director deneral of the International Atomic Energy Agency. EPA

Assassination effects

Intelligence reports suggest that Iran was close to enriching uranium to 95 per cent within three days using the Fordow centrifuges, but with these now destroyed that will be difficult to achieve.

Israeli intelligence is reported to know that Iran has some highly enriched uranium hidden, probably at Isfahan, which was one reason for their bombing campaign.

Iran will also need to rebuild facilities and, while this could take months, many of the parts will have to be imported with, intelligence agencies on high alert.

Iran has suffered the killings of up to 17 nuclear scientists along with destruction of research papers and laboratories. While it will have some corporate knowledge left over, this will be difficult to rebuild.

Test firing of Iran's surface-to-surface Fateh missile. AFP

Labs gone

The main problem for Iran is that it needs to turn enriched uranium hexafluoride back into solid metal which requires the laboratories and factories that have now been destroyed.

Israeli and US intelligence service appear to have infiltrated the regime, making it possible that Iran’s adversaries will know or can find out where the uranium has gone.

Mr de Bretton Gordon, a former British Army colonel, admitted that “you can hide uranium fairly easily as it doesn't emit really strong, powerful radiation” and if it was bombed it would cause very little radiation fallout.

But Marion Messmer, nuclear expert at Chatham House think tank, said that Fordow and other enrichment sites attacked are unlikely to be all the Iranian programme.

She claimed that the attacks would “embolden Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons as they will likely be seen now as the only security guarantee”.

Darya Dolzikova, a nuclear specialist at the British Royal United Services Institute think tank, added that the physical elimination of the programme’s infrastructure and assassinations “will not be sufficient to destroy the latent knowledge that exists in the country”.

Dirty bombs

At best Iran could rapidly produce an “improvised nuclear device” using the 60 per cent enriched uranium but this would amount to no more than a dirty bomb that would simply spread radiation around an area without particularly deadly effect.

Dr Messner said that while a dirty bomb only required a conventional payload and some radioactive material, this would go against Iran’s goal of a nuclear arsenal. “Using some of its limited stockpile for a dirty bomb would be a waste,” she said. “And the consequences of using a dirty bomb against Israel would also likely be very severe. A dirty bomb is not a deterrence capability.”