Experts, analysts and former US government officials say Washington's alleged plans to deploy ground units to Iran to retrieve uranium stockpiles could expose personnel to potential attacks, radiation and chemical risks.
An attempt by the US to put boots on the ground in a bid to secure Iran's uranium stockpile would be a "complex, risky and lengthy operation," laden with radiation and chemical risks, according to experts, analysts and former government officials in Washington.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
US President Donald Trump has so far offered various versions of his country's objectives in the Iran war, but has consistently stated that ensuring Tehran "never having a nuclear weapon" is a primary objective.
What is less clear is how far Trump would be willing to go to ensure the country is not equipped for such a project and to reverse steps already taken in that direction.
Iran has around 441 kilograms of uranium, enriched up to 60%, which it has produced and stored for a number of years.
That level of uranium purity is a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, needed to create nuclear bombs, according to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA says Iran’s stockpile could allow it to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs should the country decide to weaponise its programme.
Iran has long insisted that its nuclear facilities are entirely peaceful and civilian-purposed and stressed repeatedly that they have no plans to acquire nuclear weapons.
Tehran has claimed its stockpiles remain buried under piles of rubble in its nuclear facilities, which were bombed by the US last year. In June, Trump announced that the US had carried out a precise operation targeting the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan sites, using deep penetrating GBU-57 "bunker-buster" bombs.
IAEA inspectors have not been able to verify the near weapons-grade uranium since June 2025. The lack of inspections has made it difficult to know exactly where it is located.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said the agency believes a stockpile of roughly 200 kilograms of uranium is stored in tunnels at the nuclear complex outside of Isfahan.
The site was mainly known for producing the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges to be spun and purified.
Additional similar quantities are believed to be at the Natanz site, and smaller amounts may be stored at the facility in Fordow, which is located in a heavily mountainous region.
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a congressional hearing on 19 March that the intelligence community had "high confidence" that it knows the location of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpiles.
Radiation and chemical risks
Iran's stockpile, in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas, is believed to be fitted into canisters, each weighing about 50 kilograms when full.
Estimates on the number of canisters range from 26 to about twice that number, depending on the fullness of each cylinder.
Analysts say the canisters are "pretty robust" and are designed for storage and transport under rough conditions, says David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq.
He warned that "safety issues become paramount" should the canisters be damaged, for example, due to airstrikes, allowing moisture to get inside.
In such a scenario, there would be a hazard from fluorine, a highly toxic chemical that is corrosive to skin, eyes and lungs. Anyone entering the tunnels seeking to retrieve the canisters "would have to wear hazmat suits," Albright said.
It would also be necessary to maintain distance between the various canisters in order to avoid a self-sustaining critical nuclear reaction that would lead to "a large amount of radiation," he said.
To avoid such a radiological accident, the canisters would have to be placed in containers that create space between them during transport, added Albright.
Risks for ground forces
Securing Tehran's nuclear material by sending US troops to the country would be a "very complex and high risk military operation," said Christine Wormuth, who was secretary of the army under former US President Joe Biden.
Wormuth said the risks come due to the material being dispersed across the three main Iranian nuclear sites, adding that its undertaking would "probably" result in US service member casualties.
She added that the scale of the operation would have to be big. In her estimation, the Isfahan site alone would require upwards of 1,000 military personnel on the ground.
Given that tunnel entrances are probably buried under rubble, it would be necessary for helicopters to fly in heavy equipment, such as excavators, and US forces might even have to build an airstrip nearby to land all the equipment and troops, she noted.
In her opinion, US special forces would have to work "in tandem" with nuclear experts who would look underground for the canisters, while troops above ground establish a security perimeter in case of any potential attacks.
"The Iranians have thought this through, I'm sure, and are going to try to make it as difficult as possible to do this in an expeditious way," said Wormuth.
"So I would imagine it will be a pretty painstaking effort to go underground, get oriented, try to discern which ones are the real canisters, which ones may be decoys, to try to avoid booby traps."
Negotiated settlement ‘remains the best option’
The best option would be "to have an agreement with the (Iranian) government to remove all of that material," said Scott Roecker, former director of the Office of Nuclear Material Removal at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy.
A similar mission occurred in 1994 when Washington, in partnership with the government of Kazakhstan, transported 600 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet republic in an operation dubbed "Project Sapphire".
The material was left over from the USSR's nuclear programme. Roecker added that the Department of Energy's Mobile Packaging Unit has also gained reliable experience in other operations, such as removing material from Georgia and Iraq.
The unit consists of technical experts and specialised equipment that can be deployed anywhere to safely remove nuclear material. Roecker says it would be ideally positioned to remove the uranium under a negotiated deal with Iran.
Though a deal seems unlikely now. Tehran remains highly suspicious of Washington under Trump, especially after he withdrew from the previous international nuclear deal brokered by former President Barack Obama.
Roecker says that under a negotiated solution, IAEA inspectors could also be part of the mission, a premise Grossi endorsed as recently as 22 March, almost a month into the US-Israeli war on Iran. "We are considering these options, of course," the IAEA chief said.
Iran has "a contractual obligation to allow inspectors in," Grossi added. "Of course, there's common sense. Nothing can happen while bombs are falling."