Iran and Enrichment

Does the Trump administration understand how ‘enriched’ uranium is

made into weapons? For the US to reach a deal with Iran or to end its war
in the country, President Trump has said he wants Iran to surrender its
“enriched” uranium. “We want no enrichment, but we also want the
enriched uranium,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week. The
president has at times cited Iran’s “enriched” uranium stores as part
of his ever-changing rationale for the war, and in recent days, he’s
reportedly considered sending US troops in to seize them. But nuclear arms
experts say the way Trump and his lead negotiator have talked about uranium
enrichment raises doubts about how well they understand the technicalities.
For one, Trump keeps referring to “nuclear dust,” which is not a known
term in the nuclear energy industry. And since the February 26 US-Iran
nuclear talks, Steve Witkoff, a former real estate developer who has been
leading US negotiations with Iran along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared
Kushner, has made claims that experts say betray a similarly weak
expertise. Once uranium has been enriched to 20%, a vast majority of the
work required to enrich it to weapons-grade levels has been completed. It
becomes exponentially easier to enrich 20% uranium to 60%; enriching from
60% to 90% is even easier, he says. The higher the enrichment level, the
lower the minimum mass of enriched uranium required to produce a bomb, says
Diaz-Maurin. For example, uranium that’s been enriched above 20% can
technically be used to produce a crude weapon, but you would need about 400
kilograms of it, making it inefficient and impractical. When the enrichment
level goes up to 60%, the critical mass drops down to about 42 kilograms.
Uranium enriched to weapons-grade requires about 28 kilograms, which can
fit into a missile warhead, he says. Western nations, as well as the UN
watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have long expressed
concerns about Iran’s production and stockpiling of highly enriched
uranium. On June 12 last year, the IAEA estimated that Iran’s stockpile
included 440 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60%, Diaz-Maurin wrote in
a recent analysis. The next day, Israel attacked Iran, killing prominent
nuclear scientists and significantly damaging Iran’s main enrichment
site. Less than two days after Witkoff and Kushner met with Iran to discuss
its nuclear program, the US and Israel attacked the country. Some experts
suggest that the decision was informed, at least partially, by a shallow
understanding of Iran’s nuclear program and positions.

 CNN 1st April 2026 

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/01/us/word-of-week-enriched-cec