Isfahan
\nIn recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence.
\nGetting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said.
\nThe new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration\u2019s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.
\nIran\u2019s diplomatic delegation to the United Nations did not immediately return a request for comment, and the White House did not immediately reply to questions from CNN.
\nTrump has repeatedly stated that securing the material is a priority for the US in the ongoing negotiations to end the war and re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed.
\nAnd according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Friday, the two sides are inching closer to a deal that would require Iran to turn its enriched uranium over to the US. It would be destroyed on site and then taken out of the country, according to that official.
\nBut US and Iranian officials have offered conflicting accounts of the tentative deal, and its precise terms remain unclear. The purported text of a draft deal leaked to a semi-official Iranian news agency Friday, triggering an angry outburst from Trump on social media.
\nEven for the Iranians themselves, several of the sources said, removing the enriched material would now be difficult and dangerous. It would require heavy excavation equipment and de-mining efforts \u2014 which are difficult and risky.
\n\u201cIf this reporting is true, it would definitely complicate \u2026 retriev[ing] the HEU,\u201d said Scott Roecker, who headed the National Nuclear Security Administration\u2019s Office of Nuclear Material Removal from 2017 to 2021.
\nIt could also offer an opportunity for Iran to obfuscate its compliance efforts.
\nIf negotiators \u201crequire that Iran bring the entire stockpile to a central location for verification and ultimately to remove or downblend the material,\u201d that would place the onus on Tehran to access and \u201cprovide the full inventory\u201d of enriched uranium, Roecker said.
\nBut, \u201cin this scenario, I would worry that Iran would claim that some portion of the HEU was irretrievable,\u201d Roecker said. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have full confidence that Iran couldn\u2019t retain access to it at some point in the future.\u201d
\nThe international community believes most of the stockpile is in collapsed tunnels at the Isfahan nuclear complex in central Iran, with some additional material held at other sites.
\nIn mid-May, the military was prepared to conduct an operation to seize the nuclear material that was ultimately deemed to be too high-risk, CNN has previously reported.
\nBut in the time since then, Iran has only further fortified the sites where its highly enriched uranium is believed to be buried underground.
\n\u201cWe know exactly what\u2019s happening,\u201d Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity of the site. \u201cNobody\u2019s even gotten close to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has previously acknowledged the dangerous nature of retrieving the uranium by force, and he expressed skepticism in a May appearance on Fox News that the Iranians would ever be capable of accessing and retrieving the buried nuclear material without detection from US intelligence.<\/p>\n
But by publicly discussing the uranium as a possible target, two of the sources noted, the president may have provided Iran with the impetus to better defend its own assets.
\nNow, even if the agreement between Tehran and Washington is signed in the coming week, additional technical negotiations to hammer out the details on the future of Iran\u2019s nuclear program are expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Isfahan In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence. Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n