Iran has escalated efforts to seal off its stockpile of enriched uranium, collapsing tunnels, and placing explosive mines at entrances in recent weeks, CNN reported on Saturday, citing five sources familiar with US intelligence. 

This comes a day after a senior administration official told reporters that the US and Iran are close to a deal requiring Iran to relinquish its uranium, which has been enriched to near-bomb grade, to the US. 

Reuters also reported on Friday that the emerging US-Iran deal will include the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program and allow the US to collect the regime’s enriched uranium.

However, details of how the uranium will be extracted have not been made clear. 

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that retrieving the uranium is one of the US’s priorities in negotiations, although he has claimed that only the US and possibly China have the capability to do so. 

US almost launched ground operation to retrieve uranium

A CNN report from Friday stated that the US had originally planned to launch a ground mission into Iran to recover the uranium, but that Trump had paused the operation. 

In an interview with 103FM, former defense minister Yoav Gallant said that the US and Israel could and should have combined forces to retrieve the uranium during the war. 

“We should have gone and brought the enriched uranium by force in a military operation during the campaign. That would have uprooted the nuclear program from Iran,” he said.

Former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Nuclear Material Removal, Scott Roecker, expressed concern over reports of heightened fortifications around the uranium. 

Roecker told CNN that such fortifications could lead to negotiators requiring Iran to bring the uranium to a central location for verification and removal, which would let Iran provide the inventory of the uranium. 

“In this scenario, I would worry that Iran would claim that some portion of the HEU was irretrievable. We wouldn’t have full confidence that Iran couldn’t retain access to it at some point in the future,” CNN quoted Roecker as saying.