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President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said that Iran claimed it had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs before the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on the country over the weekend.
Witkoff told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday that Iran’s negotiators had said to him and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, before the strikes that the country controlled roughly 460 kilograms of uranium at 60% enrichment. Witkoff said that the uranium could have been enriched to the weapons-grade level of 90% within a week to 10 days.
“Both the Iranian negotiators said to us, directly, with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60%, and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance,” Witkoff told Fox News.
The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Iran’s three main nuclear sites were believed to hold enough enriched uranium to fuel around 12 nuclear bombs.
The Wall Street Journal reported early last year, citing a confidential United Nations report, that Iran had increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, giving it enough to produce six nuclear weapons. By last summer, Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for 19 nuclear weapons within three months, the Journal reported, citing the president of the Institute for Science and International Security David Albright.
The number of potential nuclear weapons available to Iran isn’t exactly new. The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi, used a similar number in an interview with the Associated Press in October.
“In theory, with this amount of material, there would be a possibility to manufacture around 10 nuclear weapons, but that doesn’t mean that Iran has them,” Grossi told the AP. “I repeat, that doesn’t mean that Iran has them.”
Last May, the Defense Intelligence Agency said in its worldwide threat assessment that Iran had taken actions to reduce the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a first nuclear device, but the report cast doubt that the country was making bombs.
“Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so,” the report said.
Iran has long said that its nuclear program is peaceful.
In the Fox News interview, Witkoff said the Iranian negotiators told him and Kushner that Iran had the “inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel.”
“That’s how they opened up,” Witkoff said. “We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you, dead in your tracks.”
Witkoff said one of the proposals discussed at the negotiations included Iran not enriching any uranium for a decade in exchange for the U.S. paying for its nuclear fuel.
“They rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment for the purpose of weaponizing,” Witkoff said.
