Iran boosts enriched uranium stockpile, as Trump pushes negotiations
A classified International Atomic Energy Agency report found Iran, since February, produced 300 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a step away from weapons grade.
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An Iranian military member salutes while being carried by a tank past a portrait of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a military parade on April 18, 2025. (NurPhoto/Getty Images)
By Karen DeYoung and Susannah George
Iran has dramatically increased the amount of near-weapons grade enriched uranium it possesses, according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency circulated Saturday to member states in preparation for the agency’s June board meeting.
Since the last IAEA assessment in February, Iran has produced almost 300 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent — only a step away from the 90 percent needed to fuel a nuclear weapon — bringing its total stockpile to about 900 pounds, according to people familiar with the confidential new report who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its contents.
News of the IAEA assessment came as President Donald Trump said the United States and Iran were close to agreement on a nuclear deal they began negotiating in April. If no agreement is reached, Trump has said, the United States would use force to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.
“They don’t want to be blown up,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office. “They would rather make a deal, and I think that could happen in the not-too-distant future.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post Saturday on X that he had received, via his counterpart in Oman, “elements of a U.S. proposal which will be appropriately responded to in line with the principles, national interests and rights of the people of Iran.”
In a separate statement, however, Araghchi said that Iran would not submit to U.S. demands that it cease uranium enrichment altogether. “Whether or not we need enrichment — and we do — it’s unacceptable for some to impose restrictions on us just because they consider themselves powerful.”
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also issued a statement in the wake of the IAEA report, saying that it “presents a stark picture that serves as a clear warning sign: despite countless warnings by the international community, Iran is totally determined to complete its nuclear weapons program. The report strongly reinforces what Israel has been saying for years — the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly indicated that Israel is prepared to launch its own military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Trump said this week that he had told the Israeli leader to back off, pending the result of U.S.-Iran negotiations.
Whether Iran can continue any enrichment, which at low levels is used for research and energy purposes, has been the main sticking point in negotiations so far. Iran says it is allowed to do so under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has no intention of building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration has insisted that all enrichment capability must be destroyed in exchange for lifting crippling U.S. economic sanctions.
Iran has not developed a weapon that could carry a nuclear warhead. But its stockpile is enough to produce 10 nuclear weapons, according to David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington nonprofit. Albright noted the IAEA report found Iran’s inventories of 20 percent enriched uranium have been considerably depleted, suggesting an attempt “to get as much 60 percent uranium as possible.”
Various negotiating proposals put forward by U.S. officials in recent weeks include an agreement that Iran allow all its enriched uranium to be removed from the country, with fuel for research reactors being supplied from abroad and the destruction of centrifuges used for enrichment. A second proposal has called for allowing a consortium — including Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries and the United States — to produce low-enriched uranium for Tehran’s research reactors.
Trump has also indicated that he wants the United States to be able to inspect Iranian facilities and, if necessary, destroy them.
“I want [the agreement] very strong, where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed,” Trump said Friday. “We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in a lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.”
Asked whether there was a way to bridge the U.S.-Iran gap over enrichment, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told reporters in a Vienna news conference Wednesday that “if there is a willingness to come to an agreement, I think you can find a way.”
In a separate report circulated to its member board Saturday, the IAEA concluded that Iran had carried out secret nuclear-related activities more than two decades ago with undeclared nuclear material at three locations inside Iran.
That report detailed Iran’s ongoing refusal to answer IAEA questions regarding the sites, material and activities there.
George reported from Dubai.
Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community.
Susannah George is The Washington Post's Gulf bureau chief, based in Dubai, where she leads coverage of the oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf and their neighbor, Iran. She previously spent four years as The Post's Afghanistan-Pakistan bureau chief.
