What’s the Deal With Iran’s Uranium Fetish? | The American Spectator

President Donald J. Trump insists that if Iran craves peace and prosperity, it must surrender its “uranium dust” and exit the uranium business.

So, what’s the deal with Iran’s uranium fetish?

If Iran were like a giant Belgium, with precisely 0.00 barrels of oil reserves, the largely annihilated ayatollahs’ decades-long obsession with uranium might make sense. If the only thing beneath Iran’s sands were more sand, one might understand its quest for atomic energy. However, Iran is awash in petroleum.

According to U.S. Energy Information Agency data, Iran swims atop 208.6 billion barrels of black gold. That earns Iran the bronze medal in the oil-reserve Olympics. Saudi Arabia (258.6 billion) holds the silver. The gold belongs to Venezuela (303.8 billion). America is No. 10, with 44.4 billion barrels. (RELATED: Drill, Baby, Geopolitics: Now It’s a Matter of National Security)

As for natural gas, Iran wins the silver medal, with 34.8 trillion cubic meters of proven reserves. That’s enough to last 137 years — until 2163. (My personal bicentennial!) Only Russia sits prettier, with 47.8 trillion cubic meters.

Iran needs a new energy source like Venice needs a new canal. If the ayatollahs want more fuel, they know what to do: Drill, baby, drill.

Meanwhile, Iran’s passion for uranium is seldom seen within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Among OPEC’s 12 members, the United Arab Emirates is the only nation, aside from Iran, that operates a commercial nuclear reactor. Other major petroleum producers are happy to power their nations via their vast pools of dinosaur juice. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Hormuz)

Do the ayatollahs chase atoms because they are closet “climate” warriors? Does every mullah have an inner Al Gore whispering inconvenient truths about oil and gas and urging them to trade fossil fuels for fission?

There is no evidence of any such thing, nor is there a cadre of eco-activists clogging Tehran’s streets and clamoring to end “the climate crisis.” To date, no reports have emerged of a hijab-clad Iranian Greta Thunberg snarling, “چطور جرات میکنی؟”

Pronounced “Chatur jarat mikni?” — this is Farsi for Thunberg’s curse: “How dare you?”

Regarding Iran’s uranium-235 supply, nuclear expert Robert Goldston warns: “Ninety-nine percent of the work needed to enrich the full stockpile to 90 percent has already been performed.”

And why have the ayatollahs enriched uranium so intensely? Uranium-235 at 3-5 percent enrichment is perfect for atomic energy. However, Iran has breached the 20 percent threshold for “highly enriched uranium” (HEU). Indeed, it has achieved 60 percent! For peacefully generating electricity, 60 percent-enriched uranium is like running a lawnmower with jet fuel — total overkill.

So, why, oh why, would the ayatollahs be so monomaniacal about refining uranium beyond what’s required to generate atomic energy that Iran doesn’t need and that almost no other OPEC nation even wants?

Iranian officials gave the answer to this vital question to Trump’s envoys on February 6. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner conferred with their Iranian counterparts in Oman. They sought a peaceful offramp before the launch of Operation Epic Fury. (RELATED: Trump’s Pakistan Card and Iran’s ‘Paranoid Inertia’)

“Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel that they possess,” Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity on March 2. “Both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60 percent, and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs. That was the beginning of their negotiating stance.” A 460-kilogram supply equals 1,014 pounds, or roughly half a ton of HEU.

Iran volunteered this information, not to tout its technical prowess but to terrify America.

Notwithstanding Governor Tampon Tim Walz’s (D – Minnesota) claim Saturday that “no threat was present” — and House Democrat chief Hakeem Jeffries’ assertion Monday that there is “no evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat” — the Iranian attachés’ mere words made their country an imminent threat. Weapons-grade uranium requires 90 percent enrichment. The road from 60percent to 90 percent is neither long nor winding.

On March 16, Robert Goldston wrote ominously for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: “While press coverage has indicated that it is a short technical step from 60 percent enrichment to 90 percent, perhaps it is not evident to the public that 99 percent of the work needed to enrich the full stockpile to 90 percent has already been performed.” If Iran’s centrifuges spun just another 1 percent, they would yield bomb-quality uranium.

Not so fast, Iran’s leaders contend.

“We are not seeking nuclear weapons,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reassured diplomats in Tehran in February 2025. Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani commented in April 2024: “Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program only serves peaceful purposes.”

U.S. atomic scientist Matthew Bunn, PhD, dismisses such statements. The Harvard professor and former White House science advisor told CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday: “Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now.”

Bunn’s skepticism is well-founded. Left to their own devices, the ayatollahs would hone their Uranium-235 into atomic bombs. They would hurl them, use them for atomic blackmail, or slip high-quality uranium dust to their deadly pals in Hamas or Hezbollah. These terrorist murderers could disperse it via dirty bombs or simply toss it into the air on a windy day in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, or on Tel Aviv’s Bograshov Beach.

“Death to America!” is not just a slogan. It is as central an organizing principle to Iran as “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is to the USA. For 47 years, Iran has menaced, wounded, kidnapped, and killed Americans, Israelis, Jews elsewhere, fellow Muslims, and innumerable others worldwide. Iran has been a designated state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 and is widely considered Earth’s No. 1 perpetrator of those lethal arts.

“More Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth,” the White House declared March 4 in its “partial record of the Iranian regime’s blood-soaked war on Americans.” Consider just six of these 42 violent incidents:

• November 1979: Iranian students, backed by the regime, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran — taking 66 Americans hostage in a 444-day standoff.

• October 1983: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed 241 U.S. military personnel — including 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel — in a truck bombing at a Marine compound in Beirut.

• June 1996: Iran-backed Hezbollah Al-Hijaz terrorists killed 19 U.S. Airmen and wounded nearly 500 others in a truck bombing at a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

• August 1998: Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, facilitated by Iran-backed Hezbollah, simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people — including a dozen American citizens.

• Between 2003 and 2011: Iran-backed militias killed at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq — “roughly one in every six American combat fatalities in Iraq.”

• October 2023: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed 46 Americans and kidnapped at least 12 Americans in the October 7th massacre.

“It is clear that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, combining explicit hostile intent, expanding strike capabilities, and concrete preparations documented by U.S. and allied intelligence,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told me. The president and founder of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center added: “In the days leading up to this conflict, Tehran feared that the U.S. and Israel had uncovered its new accelerated uranium enrichment and deployment of advanced centrifuges, steps that sharply reduce breakout time for a bomb.”

AI-generated image by Deroy Murdock on Apr. 20, 2026, ChatGPT, OpenAI

Darshan-Leitner added: “Iran began preparing for a potential preemptive attack on Israel, U.S. bases, and its regional allies. America simply could not let Iran conceal its uranium nor allow a dangerous surprise attack on its bases or allies. President Trump knew it was a question of who would pull the trigger first.”

Faced with Iran’s blood-soaked history, the terminal psychosis of its leadership, and his top diplomats’ premonition of 11 atomic bombs, Trump faced a choice: neutralize this deep-rooted, determined, and deadly threat now, or handle it the way doctors Walz, Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer would treat a patient’s early colon-cancer diagnosis: “Relax. There’s no imminent threat. Come back in five years.” When their patient faced metastatic Stage IV disease in 2031, these quacks would say: “No sweat. You can buy chemotherapy drugs en route to hospice.”

Thankfully, President Trump did not wait to act until an atomic-tipped Iranian missile began plunging into the National Mall. Trump spoke of the ayatollahs on Saturday: “They’ve gotten away with murder for years. They’re not getting away with it anymore.”

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