The recent massive U.S. strike near Iran’s central city of Isfahan likely sought to render Tehran’s remaining highly enriched uranium stockpile inaccessible by burying it deep underground — a strategy that would negate the need for a prolonged and risky U.S. ground operation to extract the material, according to an Israeli military analyst writing Tuesday.
Writing in Ynet on Tuesday, Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai — a veteran Yediot Ahronot correspondent and Israel Prize recipient — assessed that the strike reflects a deliberate U.S. effort to neutralize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by entombing it beneath rock, soil, and collapsed tunnel infrastructure rather than attempting to remove it by force.
Ben-Yishai began with what he described as one of the central unresolved issues of the conflict: Iran’s remaining stockpile of roughly 440 kilograms (about 970 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent — material that could be further enriched to weapons-grade level within weeks and potentially yield enough fissile cores for up to 11 nuclear bombs.
That stockpile, he wrote, remains a major concern for both Washington and Jerusalem.
The urgency surrounding the stockpile was sharpened by failed diplomacy leading up to the conflict, with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff saying Iranian negotiators made clear they would not relinquish their enrichment program or give up what they could not be forced to surrender militarily.
According to Ben-Yishai, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the uranium is believed to be stored deep underground in tunnels at two nuclear sites — Isfahan and Natanz — that were struck during last year’s 12-day war, which culminated in the U.S.-led Operation Midnight Hammer targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
He then pointed to satellite imagery published over the weekend by the French newspaper Le Monde showing trucks entering tunnels at the Isfahan facility on June 9, 2025 — days before Israel launched Operation Rising Lion on June 13, opening its 12-day campaign against Iran.
Experts cited by the newspaper, he wrote, said it could not be definitively confirmed that the containers held 60 percent enriched uranium, but the imagery likely indicated Iran had moved a significant portion — possibly all — of the material deep underground in anticipation of Israeli and U.S. strikes. The IAEA, he added, recently assessed that roughly half of the enriched uranium is stored in Isfahan.
Ben-Yishai said recent discussions had centered on two possible ways of addressing the stockpile: a ground operation to extract it from Iran or a negotiated arrangement under which Tehran would transfer it abroad.
He suggested the first option would be extraordinarily difficult.
A ground operation, he wrote, would likely require more than 1,000 troops, the establishment of airstrips at sites such as Natanz and Isfahan to sustain the force, and heavy engineering equipment capable of opening sealed tunnels — all while exposing U.S. personnel to casualties and requiring a sustained American military presence inside Iran.
The alternative, he argued, is to neutralize the uranium by burying it so thoroughly that Iran would need at least a year to locate and recover it, buying the United States and Israel time to detect and disrupt any such effort.
In Ben-Yishai’s telling, that appears to be the course Washington chose.
“It can be assessed with reasonable confidence,” he wrote, that the United States opted to bury the material rather than attempt a ground extraction or rely on Iranian cooperation. He said U.S. forces struck the area surrounding the uranium storage site at Natanz in March and likely carried out a similar operation overnight in Isfahan.
That assessment appears to align with what has publicly emerged about the strike.
President Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social on Monday night showing a series of massive explosions near Isfahan, but did not explain what had been hit. A U.S. official later told the Wall Street Journal that a “large number” of 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs had been used in the strike, which was described publicly as targeting a large ammunition depot.
Ben-Yishai argued that the United States appears to have taken care not to strike the enriched uranium directly, in part to avoid dispersing radioactive material into surrounding areas.
Instead, he wrote, the strikes appear to have targeted the surrounding infrastructure — sealing access routes, collapsing tunnel approaches, and leaving the uranium buried beneath more than 100 meters (over 300 feet) of rock.
As with the earlier strike on Natanz, he noted, Iranian claims at the time that there was no radioactive contamination suggested the objective was not to destroy the uranium itself, but to entomb it so deeply underground that it would be inaccessible without prolonged and detectable recovery efforts.
That broader interpretation was echoed, at least indirectly, by Trump’s comments Tuesday following the strike.
In remarks to CBS News, Trump said he does not “even think about” Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles because they are now “so deeply buried” that “it’s gonna be very hard for anybody” to get to them. He added that the material is “down there deep” and “pretty safe,” though he said the United States would “make a determination.”
Trump struck a similar tone in comments to the New York Post, declining to specify the exact target of the Isfahan strike while emphasizing its scale.
“I’d rather not say, but you’ll learn soon enough. They were rather large, weren’t they?” Trump said, later adding, “That was a beauty. That was stuff that we blew up. That was some explosion.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a similar note in a recorded statement released Tuesday ahead of the Passover holiday, saying Israel has “achieved enormous accomplishments” in its campaign and declaring that Iran “can no longer threaten our existence.”
Netanyahu said U.S. and Israeli strikes had targeted Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile capabilities, and broader military infrastructure, adding that the campaign had degraded Tehran’s ability to produce such weapons — including efforts to move key capabilities underground — and that action was taken to prevent those assets from becoming inaccessible.
Taken together, those statements lend added weight to Ben-Yishai’s central argument: that the Isfahan strike was not merely another large blast in an expanding air campaign, but part of a more targeted effort to deny Iran access to the material at the core of its remaining nuclear capability while avoiding the risks of a sustained U.S. ground presence inside the country.
Most importantly, Ben-Yishai wrote, U.S. operational activity points to a decision to bury the enriched material rather than undertake the kind of prolonged ground mission that would have required a sustained American military presence on Iranian soil.
That, he suggested, may be precisely why Trump chose to publicize the footage.
Trump has also suggested the broader campaign may be nearing its conclusion, saying Tuesday the United States is “ahead of schedule” and has largely eliminated Iran’s military capabilities, adding in separate remarks that “we won’t have to be there much longer” as U.S. forces continue targeting what remains of Tehran’s offensive infrastructure.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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