Lately, ideas are being floated on what to do about the 440 kg (970 lbs.) of 60% enriched uranium Iran has squirreled away. One notion is to send in the 82nd Airborne Division (several thousand of whom will soon be in the region) to secure the material and fly it out of Iran. On the other end of the difficulty spectrum is simply to use munitions to bury the uranium cache under thousands of tons of rubble, rendering the radioactive material inaccessible. Though the latter approach might be easier in the short run, the risk is that Iran could eventually dig it up given enough time.
Inserting Ground Troops Into Iran Is Risky
Putting US ground forces into Iran for any reason is a tricky business. With the buildup of two Marine Expeditionary Units and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division in the region, President Trump has decision options to insert troops on Kharg Island to seize Iran’s oil distribution capability and possibly occupy Iranian port facilities bordering the Strait of Hormuz. However, airdropping forces deep into the interior of Iran at Isfahan, where experts believe the 60% enriched uranium is stored, is far more difficult and complex. The New York Times reported “American intelligence agencies have determined that Iran or potentially another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though it was entombed under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year, according to multiple officials familiar with the classified reports.” Those same officials believe that Iran can get to the uranium stockpile “through a very narrow access point.”
According to satellite imagery, though some of the enriched material was also located at Natanz and Fordow, those stockpiles were moved to Isfahan before airstrikes destroyed the sites. So, if an extraction of the material is attempted, Isfahan would be the primary location. Moving the material is challenging because the 60% enriched uranium is stored as uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas in steel cylinders. The UF6 is moderately dangerous. As the WNTI Fact Sheet explains, “The gaseous HF (hydrogen fluoride) [combined] with water (body fluid) forms hydrofluoric acid, which is a strong corrosive. The reaction products of UF6 also have significant toxic properties.” Along with the chemical hazards, there are also significant radiation concerns. Handling the material would require highly trained personnel. Also required would be a contingent of hundreds, if not a thousand or more ground forces, to provide security while heavy equipment and operators cleared away the rubble from airstrikes to gain access to the UF6 containers. Isfahan has a usable airport that can accommodate larger military cargo aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster III, bringing in the earth-moving gear and to exfil the material out of Iran.
A BBC report referenced the views of Jonathan Ruhe, a resident expert on Iran’s nuclear program at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The BBC explained:
“Seizing and taking the uranium out of Iran is faster and would allow the US to dilute the material in the United States, Ruhe said. The operation would be deeply risky no matter how it is done, he added. ‘You’ve got basically a half ton of what’s effectively weapons-grade uranium that you’ve got to extricate…And there are a million things that could go wrong.’”
The Wall Street Journal was among the first to report that President Trump was reviewing plans to retrieve the uranium stockpile. “President Trump is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, according to U.S. officials, a complex and risky mission that would likely put American forces inside the country for days or longer,” the WSJ explained. Despite the extreme difficulty of removing the UF6 canisters, some believe it is worth the risk. “Trump’s request for the plan, previously unreported, signals his interest in contemplating what would be an unusually sensitive and high-stakes special operations mission,” The Washington Post observed.
A Case for Ground Forces
On his Fox News program Life, Liberty, and Levin, Mark Levin argued for sending ground forces to extract the UF6. “We’ve got to get the uranium. If it cannot be destroyed, if it cannot be altered, we gotta get it… for the reason I just said, you could make dirty bombs, and over time you can still make sophisticated missiles.” Levin opined that “He’s [President Trump] not talking about sending regular Army and infantry in by the hundreds of thousands—the men he’s talking about, the units he’s talking about, they are specialized.” Unfortunately, the task is more demanding and complicated than Levin makes it sound. However, leaving the UF6 stockpile in Iran has risks of its own. Depending on what is left of the Iranian government, it is not inconceivable that it could, after a while, recover the nuclear material and reconstitute its atomic weapons program. That is the biggest worry.
The options to get the nuclear material are not binary – use special operations forces to extract it in the midst of the fighting or bury it under more rubble in hopes the Iranians do not recover it after the conflict is over. There is a third option. Ensure that, whatever negotiated settlement transpires, one of the critical conditions is that any semblance of the Iranian government that remains voluntarily turns over the UF6 canisters as a condition of its capitulation. That option is one of the elements Trump offered in his 15-point peace framework. It achieves the end of not leaving enriched uranium in Iran’s hands with the least risk to US forces.
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