Vance suggests Iran uranium buried as mystery of missing nuclear fuel grows

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance said Monday that he believed Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is buried beneath three nuclear facilities bombed by the US over the weekend — though other officials and experts fear that the theocratic regime may have stashed the nuclear fuel just before the attack.“Our goal was to bury the uranium, and I do think the uranium is buried, but our goal was to eliminate the enrichment and eliminate their ability to convert that enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon,” Vance told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier when asked if the US knew the location of Iran’s roughly 400kg — or about 882 pounds — of uranium enriched to 60% purity.That is below the weapons-grade uranium threshold of 92% purity, but experts say the nuclear fuel currently held by Iran could be used for nefarious purposes.Earlier Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi warned that “at this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage” at Iran’s notorious Fordow nuclear site, and demanded that the United Nations organization’s inspectors be given access to “account for” what remains.Meanwhile, even the most up-to-date intelligence officials are left to guess what may have happened to the material.

A key piece of evidence: Open-source satellite images taken on Thursday and Friday showing more than a dozen cargo-style trucks lined up outside the gates of Fordow.Grossi himself stated Monday that Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araqchi had warned on June 13 that Tehran would take “special measures” to protect its nuclear equipment and materials.“We do have indications, or at least the Iranians are saying they have moved or did move this material,” Annika Ganzeveld, Iran team lead at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, told The Post.“I think this could be interpreted as Iran trying to move that material ahead of ...