Expert Tells '60 Minutes' Trump's Iran Nuclear Claim ‘Just Not True'
A former White House nuclear adviser told CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s repeated claim that Iran’s nuclear program was “completely obliterated” after U.S. and Israeli strikes last June is “just not true” - and that Iran still has enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to build 10 to 11 nuclear bombs.
The interview, which aired as a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran nears its Wednesday expiration, revealed that retrieving Iran’s uranium stockpile would require thousands of U.S. troops and carry significant risk of casualties. Trump has insisted the U.S. will get the uranium back - either through a deal or by force.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email on Sunday for comment.
Why It Matters
The fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile sits at the center of ongoing ceasefire negotiations, with Trump claiming last week that Iran had agreed to hand it over as part of a deal to end the war.
Hours later, Iranian officials insisted their HEU was not going anywhere. U.N. inspectors believe Iran currently holds close to 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent - material that, enriched just slightly further, is enough for 10 to 11 nuclear bombs. International inspectors have not been allowed to verify Iran’s stockpile since last June’s strikes.
What To Know
Dr. Matthew Bunn, a former White House nuclear adviser now at Harvard’s Belfer Center, was direct when asked about Trump’s claim that Iran’s program had been obliterated. “Yeah, that statement is just not true,” Bunn told 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega on Sunday. “You can’t say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated. There’s no doubt that the combination of the strikes in June of last year and the ongoing war have seriously set back Iran’s capabilities. But the remaining capabilities are substantial. You can’t bomb away their knowledge.”
Most of Iran’s HEU is believed to be stored in scuba tank-sized containers inside deep tunnels beneath the Isfahan nuclear facility in Iran’s desert. Satellite images show that in the weeks leading up to the current war, Iran blocked the tunnel entrances with dirt, and two weeks ago images showed roadblocks - signs analysts say suggest Tehran is concerned about a U.S. or Israeli raid. Nuclear analysts have also identified a second site of concern, known as Pickaxe Mountain, where satellite images from February show an entrance to what is believed to be a massive nuclear facility buried deep under solid rock.
America’s bunker-busting bombs may not be able to reach the containers, meaning a military retrieval operation would require boots on the ground. Andrew Weber, a nuclear expert who led a covert 1994 mission codenamed Project Sapphire - removing more than 1,300 pounds of bomb-grade uranium from Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union - told 60 Minutes the scale of an Iran operation would dwarf anything previously attempted. “In Iran, we couldn’t send a team in to do this unilaterally without great risk,” Weber said. “You would need to set up in the middle of the country a secure perimeter. It would probably take thousands of U.S. troops to secure the facility while our experts excavated the HEU that’s located inside deep tunnels at a place called Isfahan.”
Project Sapphire took a team of just over 30 people and six weeks to complete, under the cover of a humanitarian mission. Weber described black ice on the roads the night the uranium was transported to waiting C-5 Galaxy cargo planes. “We didn’t want the Iranians or organized criminal groups to know that the material was being transported,” he said. The HEU was flown to Oak Ridge, Tennessee for safekeeping.
Scott Roecker, a former top official at the National Nuclear Security Administration, said cooperation is the essential ingredient any such mission requires. “There was agreement in place with the countries. And so that’s a really key fact here. You wanna have a willing partner who’s working with you hand in hand,” Roecker said. Asked if it had ever been done without cooperation, he was unequivocal. “I’ve never seen it done without that. Never in my experience have I seen that.” Roecker added that if his former colleagues called him tomorrow to go into Isfahan, “I would go in a heartbeat.”
Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a former Navy SEAL and deputy director of U.S. Central Command, said a ground operation in Iran would be high risk but achievable - and that casualties should be expected. “You have to occupy territory. You have to confront. You have to force your way in,” Harward said. “But we can do it.” He said Iran’s remaining drone and missile capabilities would be the primary threat. “That’s your real threat to your time on the ground and the force.”
What a Retrieval Operation Would Actually Look Like
According to experts and former government officials who spoke to the Associated Press, any U.S. military mission to secure Iran’s uranium stockpile would be among the most dangerous and complex operations ever attempted - involving radiation hazards, potential decoys and booby traps, and a significant likelihood of American casualties.
Christine Wormuth, who served as Army Secretary under former President Joe Biden and now leads the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told the AP that securing the Isfahan site alone would require at least 1,000 military personnel working in difficult underground conditions. Because tunnel entrances are likely buried under rubble, helicopters would need to fly in heavy excavation equipment, and U.S. forces might need to construct a nearby airstrip. Special forces - potentially including the 75th Ranger Regiment - would work alongside nuclear experts searching for the canisters, while guarding against potential decoys and booby traps. “The Iranians have thought this through, I’m sure, and are going to try to make it as difficult as possible,” Wormuth said.
Iran’s stockpile is stored in roughly 26 to 50 pressurized canisters containing uranium hexafluoride gas, each weighing around 110 pounds when full. David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the AP that if any canister were damaged - by an airstrike, for example - anyone entering the tunnels would need full hazmat protection due to the risk of toxic fluorine exposure. Precise spacing between canisters during transport would also be essential to prevent an unintended nuclear reaction.
The safest exit strategy, Albright said, would be to fly the material out of Iran and downblend it - combining it with lower-enriched uranium to reduce it to civilian-use levels. Doing so inside Iran is unlikely given war-damaged infrastructure, according to Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
Beyond Isfahan, additional HEU quantities are believed stored at the Natanz nuclear site and possibly at Fordo. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress in March that the intelligence community has “high confidence” it knows where Iran’s stockpiles are located.
Experts across the board told the AP that a negotiated solution remains the least dangerous path. “The best option would be to have an agreement with the government to remove all of that material,” said Scott Roecker, former director of the Office of Nuclear Material Removal at the National Nuclear Security Administration. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said in March that inspectors were actively considering such scenarios, while noting plainly that “nothing can happen while bombs are falling.”
What Happens Next
The ceasefire expires Wednesday, and Bunn said he is not optimistic about the prospects for a lasting nuclear agreement.
He said any deal must be based on verification, not trust, pointing to more than two decades of Iranian deception. “Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now,” he said. “It’s gonna be very difficult now, given all of the distrust following this war, following Trump pulling out of talks repeatedly to launch more strikes.” Bunn’s bottom line was stark. “I think we’re gonna be dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, with very few realistic tools available to us, for a long time to come.”
Reporting from the Associated Press contributed to this article.
2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
This story was originally published April 19, 2026 at 10:14 PM.