00:00The U.S. administration suggested this week that it knows precisely where Iran's inventory of uranium is,
00:05but the international monitors who last physically verified its location are far less certain.
00:11At issue is 441 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, along with 8,000 kilograms of material
00:16enriched to lower values. Inspectors had been monitoring and verifying the state and location
00:21of that material, conducting almost daily visits, but the June 2025 attacks changed all of that.
00:27They have now been nine months out of contact with the material, and questions are growing.
00:33Enter Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth this week.
00:35Trump suggested that the U.S. is prepared to work with Iran to dig that material out of tunnels in
00:41Esfahan,
00:41where it's presumably buried. Secretary of War Hegseth suggested that, barring cooperation,
00:47the U.S. is prepared to send in special forces or boots on the ground to physically seize the material.
00:53But diplomats familiar with IAEA thinking here in Vienna paint a bit of a different picture.
00:59In fact, only half of it, at most, is there, with the rest of it spread at other sites in
01:05Iran,
01:05and could presumably include places that we don't know about.
01:09Iran had already warned the IAEA a year ago that it was prepared to take material to undisclosed sites
01:16if it was attacked. Inspectors have not been informed about an impending U.S.-Iranian operation,
01:23and in the meantime, the relationship between the IAEA and Iran has degraded.
01:28That leaves the global nuclear watchdog, and by extension, the U.S.,
01:33without a clear line of sight, into one of the world's most dangerous nuclear inventories.
01:38That leaves the U.S.
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