Iran’s ‘nuclear dust’: Trump’s risky uranium plan — This Is America

[0:00] Hello, this is America, and that is Three Mile Island here in Pennsylvania. [0:15] Back in 1979, one of its reactors went into partial nuclear meltdown. [0:20] There were no reported injuries. [0:23] But would that be the case if Donald Trump succeeds in his mission to extract Iran's enriched uranium? [0:29] But we'll be looking at the risks and the challenges associated with America getting its hands on what Mr. Trump calls Iran's nuclear dust. [0:38] And we'll have more on that later. [0:40] But first, let's go to Cyril Vanier down in our Washington studio to get us started. [0:46] Richard, thank you very much. [0:48] The U.S. president has offered varying reasons for starting the war against Iran, the country's missiles, regional influence, threats to Israel, even hostility to the U.S. [0:58] But the one target Donald Trump always returns to, Iran's nuclear capability. [1:04] Trump wants it gone one way or another. [1:06] Now, that could mean reaching an agreement with Tehran, or it could mean further military action. [1:12] Well, Mike Hanna is at the White House. [1:14] He'll be breaking down the president's nuclear dilemma. [1:16] Alex Baird has the science behind the quote-unquote nuclear dust. [1:20] And John Holman examines the military option, the perils of seizing Iran's uranium. [1:26] First, why does Iran's highly enriched uranium matter so much to the U.S.? [1:31] Richard Gaseford reports from Three Mile Island. [1:33] By taking the enriched uranium, America says it would stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. [1:42] And that is a key red line for the Trump administration. [1:46] Because the bottom line remains the bottom line. [1:50] Iran will never get a nuclear bomb. [1:52] The choice is theirs. [1:54] All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways. [1:58] Or instead, they can watch their regime's fragile economic state collapse under the unrelenting pressure of American power. [2:05] Well, by securing that nuclear dust, as Trump calls it, the Americans really believe that it would stop Iran from threatening not just Israel and the region, but also Washington and the wider world. [2:19] Well, Iran has consistently denied that it wants to build a nuclear weapon and says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes and giving it up would stop it from generating electricity. [2:33] In effect, Iran is saying it wants to do what the U.S. has been doing for decades. [2:38] Well, this place here in Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island, opened in the 1970s and despite a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, continued to produce electricity until seven years ago when it was switched off. [2:55] But it tells a story about the importance of nuclear energy in the modern age. [3:00] It's now being prepared to be reopened to provide electricity for power hungry data centers that will drive an AI revolution in America. [3:11] Well, across the country, it's a similar story with plans to quadruple nuclear output, which currently accounts for about 20 percent of all the electricity generated in America. [3:22] But crucially, despite that desire, the U.S. has a shortage of uranium and imports the vast majority of what it needs from abroad. [3:32] And up until 2024, that included Russia. [3:36] And that poses the question, could Iran's stockpiles of enriched uranium be useful to America? [3:43] Certainly the U.S. needs nuclear fuel, but that is unlikely to fit the bill. [3:49] So, Iran's uranium has been enriched to a much higher grade than is used in U.S. nuclear power stations. [3:56] Many experts doubt it actually has a civilian use anywhere. [4:01] And what remains in Iran is more potent in terms of political power. [4:07] Richard Gaysford, Al Jazeera, Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. [4:12] Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna is at the White House. [4:14] Mike, when we talk about the nuclear issue, we're really talking about two separate things. [4:19] There's Iran's ability to enrich uranium going forward and, separately, the stockpile of highly enriched uranium that they already have. [4:27] Walk us through the administration's thinking on this. [4:30] Yes, indeed. [4:30] There's also a third factor there, and that is the enrichment of the Iranian two-weapons grade, which is some 90 percent, [4:36] whereas Iran's stockpile, it would appear, is in the region of 60 percent to the level for peacetime and nuclear power purposes. [4:45] But the position of the administration is somewhat confused by that of the president. [4:51] Let's hear what President Trump has to say. [4:55] The USA will get all nuclear dust. [4:58] You know what the nuclear dust is? [5:00] We're taking it. [5:01] We're taking it. [5:02] Very simple. [5:03] The security challenges faced by Israel are enormous, including the threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions, which I've talked a lot about. [5:14] One of the worst deals I've ever seen is the Iran deal. [5:18] Well, the question is, what is nuclear dust that President Trump refers to? [5:23] It is well known that radioactive, that uranium cannot be destroyed in an explosion. [5:29] It may be buried by those heavy strikes that the U.S. carried out on Iranian nuclear facilities last year that President Trump himself said obliterated Iranian nuclear development. [5:40] So the question that he is at this stage speaking about nuclear dust, carrying the implication that the enriched uranium was destroyed in those strikes, supporting the position that he has maintained for very months, [5:54] is a position that actually truly complicates the U.S. position in dealing with it. [5:59] Are they talking about removing enriched uranium that may be buried, which is an exceedingly problematic program, getting that out, getting it into the United States, at one state suggesting that they would give enough back to Iran for its peacetime nuclear facilities? [6:16] So the issue is clouded in doubt, mainly because of an apparent misunderstanding of the president as to what happens to enrich uranium when it gets bombed. [6:28] Mike Hanna reporting from the White House. Thank you very much. [6:31] Joint military strikes by the U.S. and Israel have dealt a massive blow to Iran's nuclear program. [6:36] Key facilities across the country have been destroyed or degraded, but the country is still believed to have this highly enriched uranium, about 450 kilos of it, the nuclear dust that Donald Trump refers to. [6:49] Alex Baird explains. [6:50] Trump's referred repeatedly to nuclear dust. [6:55] He's believed he's referring to Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. [6:59] But what does that actually mean? [7:00] So uranium starts off looking like this, straight out of the ground. [7:04] But to be useful, the uranium part needs to be separated out from the rock and then converted into a gas. [7:10] That gas is then put into fast spinning cylinders called centrifuges. [7:14] When I say fast, we're talking 1,000 spins per second. [7:18] That separates it out, the lighter part is collected, and that's the important bit. [7:22] That is called U-235. [7:25] That process has to be repeated over and over again until more and more U-235 is separated out. [7:33] Once the proportion is high enough and you turn it back into a solid, then you have something you can use. [7:40] Enriched uranium. [7:41] Once you get to a level between 3% and 5%, now you can start a nuclear power station. [7:46] And if you keep those centrifuges spinning for years and years, eventually you'll get to 60% enrichment. [7:52] That's the level that Iran's stockpile is currently at. [7:57] Once you hit that milestone, the next crucial level only takes a matter of weeks. [8:01] That level is 90%. [8:03] Weapons grade. [8:05] And that is enough for a bomb. [8:08] The UN says Iran has roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%. [8:14] So the fear in Washington and Israel is that Iran could get to weapons grade in just weeks. [8:20] President Trump's confident his bombing campaign has obliterated Iran's enrichment facilities, [8:25] burying that nuclear dust under rubble. [8:28] The question now, what happens to it? [8:33] Joining us now in the studio, Darrell Kimball, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Specialist [8:37] and Executive Director of the Arms Control Association [8:39] and retired Army Colonel and former Pentagon Director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs, David DeRoche. [8:45] Welcome to both of you. [8:46] Darrell Kimball, do we know for sure where this highly enriched uranium is, the nuclear dust? [8:52] Well, according to the IAEA, we know where most of it is. [8:55] About 200 of the 440 kilograms is near the Isfahan nuclear complex. [9:01] The other amounts are likely near the Fordow complex. [9:08] And so we have some idea. [9:13] But it's going to take, I think, the IAEA going back in and spending time to identify where [9:19] and to establish a new baseline. [9:22] And it is not dust, by the way. [9:24] It is uranium hexafluoride gas. [9:26] That is a Donald Trump-ism. [9:27] And the material is likely in tunnels or could be buried under structures from the previous bombings [9:35] in what might look like scuba tanks. [9:38] So it is also a toxic material that has to be handled very carefully in order to remove it [9:45] or to what we call downblended to lower levels of uranium enrichment. [9:50] David DeRoche, Colonel, should we believe that the U.S. has good intelligence on where this is? [9:56] I ask you this because the U.S. president has said, look, we've been looking at this highly enriched uranium [10:02] and where it might be. [10:03] We've had constant monitoring ever since the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran's nuclear facilities [10:09] and especially the mountain in Fordow a year ago. [10:12] So do we think that they have accurate intelligence? [10:16] The question is not whether I think they have an accurate intelligence, [10:19] whether President Trump and his team thinks they have accurate intelligence. [10:22] I think they do. [10:24] But, you know, there's always the problem of, you know, the possibility of a surprise. [10:28] You could have a, you know, I don't think we have a known unknown, [10:33] but we could have an unknown unknown, to put it in Rumsfeldian terms. [10:37] And, but if that is the case, what it would mean is that the Iranian regime has managed to [10:42] systemically over an extremely long period of time hoodwink, not just the United States, [10:47] but also Israel, which has penetrated most of Iran's information and the IAEA. [10:53] So it would be a profound multilateral intelligence failure if he's wrong. [10:58] So, Darrell Kimball, as a non-proliferation expert, I assume you default to treaties, [11:05] to negotiations, to agreements when it comes to nuclear matters. [11:09] I mean, do you think that a raid, because that's what's being considered, [11:12] or it's one of the tools being considered, do you think a military raid to go and seize uranium could work? [11:20] It could work, but it would be extremely risky. [11:23] I mean, the best way to deal with Iran's uranium, the highly nourished uranium, [11:28] and remember, there's also low-in-risk uranium elsewhere, is to bring the IAEA back in [11:33] and to downblend it and remove it from Iran, maybe to a third country. [11:38] That's what was done with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. [11:44] I think that's the best way. [11:46] And negotiations must be the first and second option, [11:49] because a military raid to find the material, to remove it, dispose of it, [11:55] right now would be done under hostile conditions. [11:58] And this is an operation that, I mean, according to our sources at the Department of Energy [12:03] and the Defense Department, it would take weeks, and it is not a sure bet that the United States [12:10] would find all the material. [12:12] There would be casualties, and so accountancy of the material would also be in question [12:18] at the end of this operation. [12:20] So, you know, I think the United States is best advised to try to negotiate a deal [12:29] that helps to remove this material. [12:31] Now, Iran has offered to downblend the material, meaning to convert it under IAEA supervision [12:38] from 60% enriched material, which is close to bomb grade, to 20% or below. [12:46] That would be ideal, and then even better would be to remove it from the country, [12:51] perhaps to Russia or Kazakhstan for storage or maybe even for sale. [12:57] So there are options that are available if the two sides are going to work in a serious way [13:02] to find a win-win solution. [13:04] It's interesting you bring up Kazakhstan. [13:05] We'll bring them up a little later because there's a precedent there that could be of interest [13:08] to us in the context of this conversation. [13:11] But I want to make sure our viewers understand what we're talking about when we say that a [13:16] military operation is under consideration or has been to seize this highly enriched uranium. [13:21] It would be risky, as we're saying. [13:23] It would probably leave U.S. forces vulnerable on the ground in Iran for quite a while. [13:28] Al Jazeera's John Holman got a tactical briefing. [13:32] Thanks, Cyril. [13:33] I've got here with me Jason Campbell. [13:35] He's a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, but he's also been the Secretary of Defense's [13:40] Country Director for Afghanistan and the NATO Special Operations Analyst. [13:46] So, Jason, how would it actually work if the United States was going to try and go in [13:51] and get this highly enriched uranium? [13:53] Well, John, this would be an extremely complex operation and come with a very high degree [13:58] of risk. [13:59] Fundamentally, you'd want to be near certain as to where the location of the highly enriched [14:04] uranium is. [14:05] And in some scenarios, you might be dealing with more than one location, which just exponentially [14:10] increases the risk because you're now talking about multiple operations, either simultaneously [14:14] or in very quick succession. [14:16] OK, so where might those locations be? [14:19] Well, there are three primary candidates. [14:21] The first is Isfahan. [14:23] The second is Natanz. [14:25] And the third is Fordow. [14:27] We know from credible open source reporting that the Iranians likely moved their highly [14:32] enriched uranium to this facility in Isfahan prior to last year's 12-day war. [14:37] OK, so let's take that just to make things a little bit easier for our military planners. [14:42] If it's Isfahan, what are they going to have to do to go and get it? [14:46] Right. [14:46] Well, the first thing you do before you insert any ground forces would be a series of preemptive [14:52] strikes against any Iranian military assets in the immediate area and also try to limit [14:58] the degree, if not completely blind the Iranians to this oncoming operation. [15:05] In an ideal world, you'd have a broader set of strikes around the country to keep Iran's [15:11] attention off this primary objective. [15:14] After that, because we know Isfahan was damaged during the 12-day war last year, you're talking [15:20] about limited accessibility. [15:21] So that means you have to put in a cordon with ground forces, numbering roughly 1,000 [15:27] or so to keep the area safe. [15:29] These ground forces are still going to be very vulnerable, so you're going to need near [15:32] constant air support flying over them to help protect them and have eyes on what's going [15:37] on in their immediate area. [15:39] And then things get more complicated. [15:41] OK, so let's assume that all of that's in place. [15:44] How do they get more complicated? [15:45] What comes next? [15:46] That's right. [15:46] Well, we know from reporting that the three known entrances to the Isfahan facility were damaged [15:51] in last year's 12-day war and have since been backfilled by the Iranians with soil to make [15:55] breaching them even more difficult. [15:57] So now you have to go outside of the military realm and bring in the type of equipment and [16:02] personnel who can start to dig out a path for the special operations forces trained in breaching [16:09] these types of facilities to even get in. [16:12] So just to check, we're talking about getting in contractors with specialized equipment and [16:17] telling them you're going to be digging, possibly under fire, possibly for some time for some [16:23] quite radioactive stuff. [16:26] Absolutely. [16:26] And not potentially. [16:27] You are going to be under fire and under heavy threat while you're in this location. [16:32] OK, so they've dug. [16:34] Then presumably a specialized U.S. team has gone in once they've cleared the pathway to [16:41] actually get the uranium. [16:43] What's the timescale for this? [16:46] It's very difficult to say. [16:48] The U.S. does have special operators that are trained in how to breach some of these [16:52] facilities. [16:53] They are trained in how to detect and handle this sensitive material. [16:56] But what they're going to find when they get down there is too difficult to say. [16:59] There's maybe damage from last year's bombing. [17:02] There likely will be some booby traps. [17:04] So you're talking not hours. [17:06] You're talking maybe more than a day to get down and locate it. [17:09] Never mind, bring it out to the surface. [17:11] And the overall operation, possibly weeks? [17:14] Absolutely. [17:15] This is not a quick raid or a quick strike. [17:17] This is an indeterminate amount of time, likely more than a week. [17:21] Should they do it, given all of the above? [17:25] Considering all these factors, it's very difficult to see this being a feasible option. [17:29] To flip it around, if I were an IRGC commander, I've prepared for this scenario. [17:33] And I would look at this as a potential early birthday present because they know exactly what [17:37] to do and they will strike at this hard. [17:39] Thanks a lot for that, Jason. [17:40] So that's Jason Campbell. [17:42] And now it's back to you, Cyril. [17:46] So Colonel DeRosch, the Pentagon presumably has put together some version of this briefing [17:53] for the president. [17:54] Do you think it would approximate what we just saw? [17:56] I think it would be close to it, yeah. [17:58] There's long been a counter-proliferation mission. [18:01] And there have been rehearsals at remote facilities and stuff going back decades. [18:06] So the rough capabilities are there. [18:08] The complicating factor here is the fact that the facilities themselves don't have clear [18:12] ingress and egress. [18:14] They've been rubbled. [18:15] That will have to be cleared. [18:16] Ingress, egress. [18:17] Getting in and out. [18:18] Sorry. [18:18] Sorry. [18:20] So you'd have to bring in heavy earth-moving equipment, as the report noted. [18:27] They wouldn't have to be done by contractors. [18:29] But that does take weeks, and the airlift requirement for that means that you have to find an improved [18:36] airfield, not the dirt agricultural field that we used for the pilot extraction, which [18:41] was close to Ispahan. [18:42] You'd have to seize and hold a heavy airfield, bring in heavy equipment, transport it there, [18:49] which usually requires more heavy vehicles to move it, and then maintain enough peace [18:54] and quiet to move people out. [18:59] I would disagree with Jason. [19:01] His estimate was that it would take about 1,000 troops to hold the cordon there. [19:05] I think that that would be true for a one-day, maybe a two-day operation. [19:09] But if they're there for weeks, which I think is what it would take, every mortar, every missile, [19:15] every piece of Iranian artillery is going to move in there, and they know exactly what [19:19] they're shooting at. [19:20] I think you'd need about 5,000 to 10,000 forces to hold that area. [19:23] This is the opposite of the kind of operations that Donald Trump has favored in the past, [19:28] the in-and-out operations. [19:29] I mean, of course, this is less true now that he's spent weeks bombing Iran. [19:32] But pre-Iran war, Donald Trump had a marked preference for go in, go out, get a quick [19:39] win, right? [19:40] That was the case in Venezuela. [19:41] It was the case with the previous time that the U.S. bombed Iran in June of last year. [19:47] What you're describing now is the total opposite. [19:49] Yeah. [19:49] Every American president doesn't want a protracted presence on the ground. [19:53] But this would be very hard to do without the acquiescence of the Iranian regime. [19:58] I think it's more probable that you would see a negotiation or a surrender that would [20:05] then lead to this kind of operation in the aftermath of a collapse of Iranian security capability. [20:10] But to do it while the Iranian regime remains functional and active would be a pretty major [20:17] operation. [20:18] It's not impossible, but it would require a lot of lift and it would require a lot of [20:23] forces on the ground. [20:25] And there would be, you know, everything the Iranians had would be fired into that little [20:29] pocket that would be held by the Americans. [20:31] David Kimball mentioned Kazakhstan. [20:33] And I do want to remind or inform our viewers of why that could be relevant. [20:39] There is a precedent of sorts for this high uranium enrichment extraction. [20:44] It's called Project Sapphire. [20:46] The U.S. sent a team into Kazakhstan to secure a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium. [20:50] This was back in 1994. [20:52] A joint civilian military team of 31 Americans entered a remote area of the country in a [20:57] covert operation. [20:58] They worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for almost, to the colonel's point, a month. [21:05] They seized around 600 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium that came from an abandoned Soviet [21:09] submarine project. [21:11] And that uranium was repackaged into 448 shipping containers. [21:15] It was then loaded into two military planes, flown to America to be blended down. [21:21] So, David Kimball, do you think that could be a blueprint for something the U.S. could [21:25] do in Iran? [21:26] Well, technically, it's a blueprint. [21:28] But we have to remember, at the time, Kazakhstan was enthusiastically welcoming the Americans to [21:34] assist with this operation. [21:36] That material was a proliferation risk. [21:39] I mean, that's a very remote part of southeastern Kazakhstan. [21:44] I've been there. [21:44] They wanted it removed so that there wasn't a risk that that material was going to be [21:48] sold to terrorists or third parties. [21:52] This is not the case with Iran right now. [21:54] I mean, Iran wants to protect that 440 kilograms of uranium-enriched to 60 percent U-235. [22:03] So, the best approach, as I said before, I mean, given all of these realities, is for the [22:08] United States and Iran to negotiate a solution. [22:11] And I think there is a solution that's available if the two sides give each other the time to [22:19] negotiate something. [22:20] This is something where the devil's in the details. [22:23] I would also add that the IAEA is critical here. [22:26] Neither side is talking very much about the role of the IAEA. [22:29] And Director General Grossi has been emphasizing... [22:33] So, the IAEA, by the way, is the UN's nuclear watchdog. [22:36] And one of its main missions is to verify, or one of the main things it can do in this [22:40] context is to verify a country, Iran's, in this case, nuclear program. [22:45] Exactly. [22:46] And so, you know, a lot of the information we have had about Iran's nuclear status for [22:51] years has been due to IAEA inspectors being in Iran. [22:55] But after the June 2025 strikes, those inspectors had to leave. [22:59] Iran has not allowed them back into these bombed sites, including the areas where the HEU is, [23:05] the highland-riching uranium. [23:06] So, this is critical to making sure that we know that the material is all gone. [23:12] And the other thing I would point out is that this is not the only nuclear asset, nuclear [23:18] capabilities Iran has. [23:19] They have other stockpiles of low-enriched uranium. [23:22] They have other places where there are workshops that can produce the machines, the centrifuges, [23:28] that spin this uranium hexafluoride gas to higher bomb-grade levels. [23:33] But there's reason to believe much of that would have been destroyed by now. [23:37] Well, much of that was destroyed at Natanz and Fordow, the two major industrial-scale [23:43] centrifuge facilities. [23:46] But there are other facilities, much more dispersed, that probably still exist, that have not been [23:52] destroyed, that can produce more centrifuge machines. [23:56] So, if there is material left over in Iran, low-enriched, these machines could potentially [24:01] increase the enrichment level over time. [24:05] You know, this is why we need to make sure that the IAEA inspectors are back in to make [24:09] sure that Iran is not pursuing a secret program long after this HEU might be removed one way [24:16] or another. [24:16] So, I understand from everything you're telling us that the military option is so difficult [24:21] and risky and uncertain that you keep going back to make a deal, remove, find another way to remove, [24:29] agree with Iran on how to remove the enrichment or the, I beg your pardon, the uranium, or downblend it. [24:35] Colonel DeRosh, that brings us back to the deal scenario. [24:39] So far, obviously, a deal hasn't materialized. [24:41] We know that this president wants to negotiate while keeping the other side under pressure. [24:46] From a military standpoint, if Donald Trump wants to keep Iran under pressure, wants to [24:51] maintain a credible threat of overwhelming, imminent American military force, is there [24:57] any time limitation to that? [25:01] Because he has a lot of resources devoted to that right now. [25:04] Well, the military constraints are less important than the political constraints, which is the [25:10] upcoming midterm elections. [25:12] Militarily, there is a cost and there is a damage to the force of keeping ships sailing. [25:18] We saw, for example, you know, the Gerald Ford, which has been at sea for 11 months, which [25:23] is an extremely long deployment for an American nuclear, they started to get problems, fires [25:27] in the ship's laundry, things of that nature, which in hindsight are, you know, nobody plans [25:32] for accidents, but the longer you remain at sea without a break, the more accidents you [25:35] get. [25:36] That's as inevitable as gravity. [25:37] The air crews that are deployed, that are living in remote locations, that are on strip [25:43] alert to resume the bombing campaign, there's always the risk of a lack of attention, of [25:50] just fatigue leading to more air damages. [25:54] We saw that two of the aerial tankers that we lost were due to a mid-air collision. [25:58] I think that the investigation will show that fatigue and high operating temp was at least [26:03] part of that, but all of that is much less important than the political constraints that [26:09] President Trump does not want to see gasoline at $4 a gallon as summer vacations start. [26:16] So, you know, there is an impetus to negotiate, but on favorable terms. [26:21] I will have to disagree in one detail. [26:24] I think that President Trump's preference is not to have the IAEA conduct inspections because [26:28] once they find something and they go back to the UN, action can be confronted. [26:32] I think he wants to push the Iranians to a point where they blow through another red [26:36] line and the United States does it. [26:40] And then if there's no compliance or fooling around, there's an immediate response, not [26:43] a referral to the UN where the Russians or the Chinese can frustrate. [26:47] We'll have to go. [26:48] We'll have to leave it at that for today. [26:50] Thank you very much. [26:50] Colonel David DeRoche, a retired Army colonel, former Pentagon director of Arabian Peninsula [26:55] Affairs, and Daryl Kimball, nuclear nonproliferation specialist and executive director of the [27:00] Arms Control Association. [27:01] Thank you very much to both of you. [27:04] And now that's it from us in the Washington studio. [27:07] Back to Al Jazeera's Richard Gaseford. [27:08] Thanks, Cyril. [27:11] On the next edition of This Is America, we'll be taking a closer look at Donald Trump's negotiating [27:16] team. [27:17] Who does he have who could seal the deal and who do the Iranians trust? [27:21] That's 18.30 GMT on Monday, 2.30 p.m. Eastern here in the United States. [27:29] But for now, from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, goodbye.