Military experts and former White House advisers are sounding alarms that Iran remains a potent nuclear threat, directly contradicting President Donald Trump’s assertions that the regime’s atomic capabilities were “completely obliterated” following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes last June.
Despite the President’s rhetoric, Dr. Matthew Bunn, a former White House nuclear adviser, told 60 Minutes on Sunday that the claim is “just not true.” Bunn, now with Harvard’s Belfer Center, revealed that Iran retains enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to manufacture between 10 and 11 nuclear bombs.
“You can’t say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated,” Bunn stated. “You can’t bomb away their knowledge.”
The discrepancy comes at a critical juncture as a fragile two-week ceasefire nears its expiration. While Trump claimed last week that Tehran agreed to surrender its stockpile as part of a peace deal, Iranian officials swiftly denied any such arrangement.
U.N. inspectors estimate Iran holds approximately 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent. At this level, the material requires only minimal further processing to reach weapons-grade. Because international inspectors have been barred from sites since last year’s strikes, the exact status of the stockpile remains unverified.
Analysts warn that securing this material through military force—a “retrieval operation”—would be unprecedented in scale and danger. Intelligence indicates the HEU is stored in pressurized canisters deep within tunnels at the Isfahan nuclear facility and a secondary site known as Pickaxe Mountain, buried under solid rock.
Andrew Weber, who led the 1994 “Project Sapphire” to remove bomb-grade uranium from Kazakhstan, noted that an Iranian mission would dwarf previous covert operations. “You would need to set up a secure perimeter in the middle of the country,” Weber told 60 Minutes. “It would probably take thousands of U.S. troops.”
Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, former deputy director of U.S. Central Command, confirmed that while a ground operation is achievable, the cost would be high. “You have to force your way in,” Harward said. “Casualties should be expected.”
Current intelligence suggests the stockpile is stored in 26 to 50 canisters of uranium hexafluoride gas. Any damage to these containers during a raid could release toxic fluorine, requiring specialized hazmat units and complex excavation equipment to navigate rubble-choked tunnels.
With the ceasefire set to expire and negotiations in Islamabad stalled, the White House faces a stark choice: resume a bombing campaign that experts say has failed to neutralize the nuclear threat, or commit to a high-stakes ground incursion that could ignite a broader regional war.
