In the high-stakes standoff between the United States and Iran, one number keeps nuclear experts awake at night: roughly 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, material so close to weapons-grade that it could be turned into fuel for 10 to 11 nuclear bombs with relatively little additional work.
That figure, verified by international inspectors more than a year ago, was the centerpiece of a sobering 60 Minutes report aired Sunday night. With U.N. inspectors long barred from Iran’s most sensitive sites, the true size of Tehran’s stockpile today remains unknown. But as diplomatic efforts falter and military tensions simmer around the Strait of Hormuz, the question has become urgent: What would it actually take for the United States to secure or remove Iran’s highly enriched uranium (HEU)?
To answer that, correspondent Cecilia Vega turned to a remarkable Cold War-era success story, a covert American operation that many had never heard of until now.
Project Sapphire: The Six-Week Miracle
In 1994, shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States learned that the newly independent nation of Kazakhstan held more than 1,300 pounds of bomb-grade uranium, enough for dozens of nuclear weapons and dangerously vulnerable to theft or sale on the black market.
A small team of just over 30 specialists from the Departments of Defense and Energy, led by nuclear expert Andrew Weber, was quietly dispatched. Operating under the cover of a humanitarian mission, they worked in secrecy for six weeks, from the moment their planes touched down until the last canister was loaded and flown out.
Weber, who later became Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, still carries photos he took himself showing rows of heavy canisters filled with the deadly material. The entire mission remained secret until it was safely completed. The uranium was flown to the United States and secured at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
“It was very important that nobody knew that we were going to be moving the material that snowy, cold night,” Weber recalled in the interview.
Project Sapphire became the model for later operations that ultimately removed more than 16,000 pounds of HEU from vulnerable countries around the world.
