The Uranium Is in Isfahan
In my previous article on this blog, I argued that the 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity are the only variable that determines who wins this war. Not the generals killed. Not the bases destroyed. Not the Strait of Hormuz. Not the price of oil. The uranium. Everything else is secondary.
Today I answer the question that article left open: where is it?
The answer is not classified. It does not require satellite imagery with centimeter resolution or intercepted IRGC communications or Mossad assets inside Iran’s nuclear establishment. It requires only the public record, deductive reasoning, and a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
What They Destroyed and What They Did Not
On June 22, 2025, seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropped fourteen GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Fordow and Natanz in what the Pentagon called Operation Midnight Hammer. Each bomb weighed 30,000 pounds. Each was designed to penetrate up to 200 feet of earth or 60 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating. At Fordow, the first bomb removed a defensive concrete cap over a ventilation shaft. The next four entered the shaft and detonated inside the enrichment hall at over 1,000 feet per second. Fordow and Natanz were severely damaged. Centrifuges were destroyed. Enrichment halls collapsed.
Isfahan was different.
The United States struck Isfahan with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a submarine instead of bunker busters. According to CNN, citing a source familiar with the operation, there was an understanding that the GBU-57 would likely not penetrate Isfahan’s lower levels, which are buried even deeper than Fordow. In a classified briefing to Congress after the strikes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said the underground storage areas at Isfahan are too deeply buried for even the Massive Ordnance Penetrator to destroy. The United States did not try. It targeted the tunnel entrances instead.
On March 29, 2026, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, working with the French newspaper Le Monde, published analysis of a previously unreported satellite image taken by an Airbus Pléiades Neo satellite on June 9, 2025. The image shows a flatbed truck loaded with 18 blue containers positioned at the south tunnel entrance of Isfahan’s underground complex. Four days before Israel attacked. Thirteen days before Midnight Hammer.
The Bulletin’s analysis concluded that Iran may have transferred a significant quantity of highly enriched uranium, possibly all of its inventory, to Isfahan on that date. The analysts noted that in early June 2025, as the prospect of U.S. airstrikes was growing, Iran would have had no interest in removing sensitive materials from a facility that was allegedly out of reach of America’s most powerful bombs.
If correct, the enrichment vaults at Natanz and Fordow were probably empty when the bombs fell.
The IAEA corroborates the direction. Director General Rafael Grossi stated that Isfahan held “a bit more than 200 kilograms” of 60% uranium as of the last inspection. The agency tracked a convoy removing what was thought to be a substantial quantity from Fordow shortly before the war. Nine months after the strikes, the IAEA still does not know the precise location of Iran’s full stockpile. No one does. But the evidence points in one direction.
The Silence That Confirms Everything
Three things did not happen after the June 2025 strikes. Each absence tells a story louder than any press conference.
First, no significant radiation was detected outside the bombed sites. The IAEA, the Iranian government, and neighboring countries all confirmed normal background levels. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran stated that radiation monitoring and field assessments showed no signs of contamination or risk to residents. Uranium enriched to 60% stored in sealed cylinders deep underground does not leave a radiological signature on the surface. The absence of contamination is consistent with material that was either not there when the bombs hit or so deep and well contained that the explosions never reached it.
Second, Iran did not cry contamination. This matters enormously. If the strikes had dispersed enriched uranium and caused radiological harm to civilians, Tehran would have held the most powerful diplomatic argument of the modern era. Russia would have convened emergency sessions at the Security Council with photographs of contaminated Iranians. China would have consolidated its narrative that the Western order is criminal and hypocritical. The IAEA would have been forced to declare an unprecedented radiological event caused by a nuclear power against a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory. None of that happened. Because reporting contamination would mean admitting the uranium was there when........
