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<\/p>\nEnriched uranium stockpile undercuts Trump claim of Iran\u2019s \u2018essential denuclearization\u2019<\/p>\n
Has the U.S. denuclearized Iran?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump often says the media never acknowledges his administration\u2019s wins, including what he considers progress on the Iran war. <\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump listed \u201cthe essential Denuclearization of Iran\u201d as one of many accomplishments in an Aug. 16 Truth Social post<\/a> targeting a Fox News anchor.<\/p>\n Has the U.S. denuclearized Iran?<\/p>\n When we asked the White House for evidence, spokesperson Olivia Wales said military operations under Trump \u201cobliterated Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, sunk their navy, wiped out Iran\u2019s defense industrial base, and continues to strangle what\u2019s left of their economy with one of the most successful naval blockades in history.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe United States and our allies are already safer\u201d because of the war the U.S. launched Feb. 28, Wales said.<\/p>\n Iran has barred international inspectors from its nuclear facilities, so information about their status is hard to come by. Still, nuclear specialists told PolitiFact they are dubious that anything close to \u201cessential denuclearization\u201d has occurred during Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n The 2025 U.S. military strikes likely set back Iran\u2019s nuclear program, but they did not eliminate it, and the attacks in this year\u2019s war have not further weakened Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities, military and nuclear experts said. The U.S. has not secured Iran\u2019s highly enriched uranium, and it\u2019s unclear whether any damage has been done to the machinery used to enrich more uranium.<\/p>\n Paradoxically, the U.S. war on Iran may have strengthened hardliners\u2019 grip on power within the Iranian regime, increasing the leadership\u2019s desire for a nuclear weapon and complicating future diplomatic efforts to curb nuclear weaponization.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no solid evidence to support the idea that Iran has lost the desire to produce a nuclear weapon,\u201d said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs. \u201cIf anything, there is more rhetoric in Iran about moving toward weapons rather than denuclearization.\u201d<\/p>\n Denuclearization remains a key war aim, but progress appears limited<\/p>\n The U.S. has tried for years to curb Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities, including signing a 2015 agreement that eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on nuclear weapons-related activities and requirements that Iran allow international inspectors for compliance. Trump withdrew<\/a> from that agreement in 2018. <\/p>\n In June 2025, <\/a>the U.S. and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear sites. Trump\u2019s frequent claim that these bombardments \u201cobliterated<\/a>\u201d those sites is exaggerated, but it was a setback for Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cIran\u2019s nuclear program was significantly degraded\u201d in the 2025 attacks, Nephew said, making it \u201cdifficult and time-consuming for Iran to reconstitute the program lost, especially under threat of further attack.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump cited Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities as one of the reasons he decided to go to war against Iran, and he has continued to repeat<\/a> the<\/a> goal<\/a> of denuclearization in recent public comments. \u201cI\u2019m in this thing for one primary reason \u2014 that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,\u201d Trump said in an Aug. 11 interview<\/a> with Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative broadcaster.<\/p>\n Today, Iran and the U.S. remain far apart in ending the conflict. A 60-day memorandum of understanding that led to a ceasefire expired<\/a> Aug. 17. That memorandum was supposed to have paved the way for talks on Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s unlikely that Iran has any functioning uranium enrichment facilities today, it still has enough highly enriched uranium stockpiled to be able to produce a dozen or more nuclear weapons over time, said Matthew Bunn, a specialist in nuclear policy at Harvard University\u2019s Kennedy School of Government. Iran likely also has stocks of advanced centrifuges and components that may be stored out of reach of even the strongest U.S. bombs.<\/p>\n Even if Iran were to start from scratch in a bid to build a nuclear weapon, it could probably produce one \u201cin a couple of years, given the knowledge it has learned\u201d to date, Nephew said.<\/p>\n The war could impede a diplomatic solution <\/p>\n Experts said the two tracks for denuclearizing Iran involve military and diplomatic efforts, or a combination of the two. The ongoing war made the diplomatic track more difficult<\/a>.<\/p>\n Any military operation to seize and remove highly enriched uranium or destroy vital machinery would likely require a substantial number of troops on the ground \u2014 a significant and risky escalation \u2014 and may not be feasible if the materials being sought are well concealed.<\/p>\n Because \u201cthe military options of acceptable risk are close to exhausted,\u201d the alternative would be a diplomatic push, said Brendan Green, a University of Cincinnati political scientist who specializes in nuclear policy. The problem is that the U.S. attacks have so far made Iran\u2019s leadership less amenable to a nuclear deal.<\/p>\n \u201cIran now has a more radical, hard-line regime, more dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and having been struck twice in a year by the United States and Israel, it is likely more motivated to get nuclear weapons to deter further attacks than ever before,\u201d Bunn said. \u201cAn effective diplomatic agreement, with tight restraints and in-depth inspections, would do the most to reduce the risks, but is now highly unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n Establishing good-faith negotiations toward denuclearization likely depends on getting regime change so that Iran becomes a more \u201cnormal\u201d country, said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a think tank. <\/p>\n Regime change is another war goal that hasn\u2019t been met<\/a>.<\/p>\n