World leaders are arguing over the damage to Iran's nuclear sites. But where is its enriched uranium?

U.S. President Donald Trump spent much of Wednesday and early Thursday morning refuting leaked reports from his own Defence Intelligence Agency that the U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities this past weekend had done only minimal damage, and that the Iranians had been able to move uranium from the sites before the strikes.

"Nothing was taken out of [the] facility," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, adding it "would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!"

This followed a statement late Wednesday by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who said "credible intelligence" showed Iran's nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan had been severely damaged and that it would take years — not months — to rebuild several key facilities.

Ratcliffe's statement, which he said was partially based on new intelligence from a "historically reliable and accurate source," was the latest drop of information meant to bolster the U.S. argument that the airstrikes have crippled Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. 

In a live address to the nation on Saturday in the immediate aftermath of the strikes, Trump proclaimed Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities were "completely and totally obliterated."

In the confusing, tumultuous debate around the extent of the damage to the nuclear sites, a larger question looms: just where is Iran's enriched uranium now?

Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, a program director at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, says it's unclear what has become of Iran's 400 kilograms of uranium enriched at 60 per cent.

"We really don't know where that material is," she told CBC News via Zoom. "Did all of it survive the attacks? Did some of it survive the attacks? We don't know, and right now, Iran is not providing that information."

Iran, which acknowledges that its nuclear installations were "badly damaged," claims to have moved its enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes on the weekend. 

Satellite imagery shows that on June 19, 16 cargo trucks were at the entrance of the deeply buried Fordow nuclear site. Three days later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was hit with multiple bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators, each of which weighed 13,000 kilograms.

Before the U.S. became directly involved in the strikes, Israel says it had been targeting Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure, along with security officials and scientists, since June 13.

Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says Iran told the UN nuclear agency it had taken special measures to protect its stockpile.

Grossi has asked Iran to allow IAEA inspectors in, but on Wednesday, the country's parliament voted to suspend co-operation with the UN agency. That step was approved by the country's Guardian Council on Thursday and will now be submitted to President Masoud Pezeshkian for final ratification. The bill would bar inspectors from accessing the sites until specific conditions are met.

Iran is still a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is legally required to co-operate with the IAEA; if it doesn't, it could be found in breach of its obligations. But Mukhatzhanova says there is little the IAEA can do to force Iran's co-operation.