The recent reports of Iran's secret activities at the nuclear sites bombed by the US invite further attacks and heighten nuclear risks despite the current ceasefire with Israel, a former UN nuclear watchdog inspector told Iran International.
“This is a ceasefire agreement. This is not arms control. This is a ceasefire agreement, and the war can start at any moment,” said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, DC.
“There were reports yesterday in the media or on X that Iran was digging back into the Isfahan mountain complex where enriched uranium may be stored. It is inviting attacks.”
Following the Israeli and US airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, around 400 kilograms—more than 900 pounds—of uranium enriched to 60% purity is unaccounted for, and their whereabouts is not known.
Albright warned that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles remain “very dangerous if there’s some remaining numbers of gas centrifuges that can be activated.”
"While the centrifuge program of Iran has essentially been destroyed, there are these remaining stocks of enriched uranium and there's 60% enriched, there's 20% enriched, and there's 5% enriched," he said.
"And Iran had the time and the motivation to move portions of these stocks, but it's really hotly debated on the outside where they are."
US President Donald Trump in an interview with Fox News ruled out the possibility that the stockpiles had been moved.
“They didn't move anything. You know, they moved themselves. They were all trying to live,” Trump said, adding that moving those uranium stockpiles would have been “very heavy, very, very heavy” and “very dangerous to do.”
Albright referred to the ongoing uncertainty about the amount and whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium: “It’s really hotly debated on the outside where they are. Some argue many of them are in Fordow where Iran thought Fordow was invincible… Others think maybe there’s some in the mountain complex near the Isfahan nuclear site.”
“It would be very risky for Iran to move forward with these things in the present climate,” he warned, adding that if Iran did restart enrichment using its existing stocks, “you’re talking weeks and months to get enough for several nuclear weapons.”
Nuclear weapon still an option for Iran
Albright said Iran’s centrifuge program and nuclear weapons infrastructure have been destroyed in Israeli and American airstrikes, but in the long term, Tehran “could reconstitute perhaps a very small enrichment program, a fraction of what it had, but that could be enough to give it weapon grade uranium for a bomb.”
“They would end its enrichment program and give up its stocks of enriched uranium in a verifiable manner. And that’s the expectation,” the expert added.
Albright urged the US to push the Islamic Republic to acknowledge defeat and avoid sacrificing its people for a nuclear weapon.
“Our challenge in the United States is to get the regime to realize they’ve lost this war… and that they shouldn’t take the view of some authoritarian leaders or dictators where they feel that they’re gonna fight and sacrifice their own people’s welfare… in order to hang on to some… enriched uranium. Is that really worth it?”
“If Iran continues down this path, it could end up sparking some retaliation, or not retaliation, but efforts by Israel to shut the tunnels again and make sure that the sites cannot be used," he warned.
