IAEA says it still cannot find Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium as inspections stay frozen

The International Atomic Energy Agency told member states this week that it still cannot verify the location or condition of Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium. Bloomberg reported an 11-page restricted document circulated in Vienna on 1 September. The paper said inspectors have not been able to carry out their duties under Iran’s Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards agreement at declared sites other than the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Field work stopped after the United States and Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites on 28 February 2026. The agency recorded damage, from commercial satellite imagery, to entrance buildings at the Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz in early March. Iran later notified the agency of further hits on that site. A June 2026 IAEA paper listed 22 declared facilities and one location outside facilities. With the exception of an inspection at Bushehr on 1–3 June, the agency said it had received no status reports on the other sites and had no access to them.

Before the 2025 and 2026 strikes the agency estimated that Iran held about 408 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. That material is the core of the present dispute. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told the Argentine newspaper Clarín that the highly enriched uranium is still where it was at the time of last year’s 12-day war. He said the plants have taken “significant damage,” that some rebuilding cannot be ruled out, and that there is “no solid evidence” of a full reconstruction. Talks, he said, are stalled until the fight over the Strait of Hormuz and the wider war is clearer.

Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, set a legal condition on 2 September. He said the agency cannot ask to inspect sites that were bombed until specific rules for inspecting damaged nuclear facilities are drafted and approved. Unattacked sites, he said, can still be visited under existing safeguards. Attacked sites fall under a law passed by Iran’s parliament. All of the targeted plants, he added, had been declared and inspected up to the moment they were hit.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in March that the enriched uranium was “under the rubble” of the June 2025 strikes and that Tehran had “no plan” to recover it. U.S. and Iranian officials have said this year that enrichment has not resumed. The IAEA cannot confirm either claim on the ground. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies review of the June safeguards report noted that the agency still lists Iran in violation of its NPT agreement and cannot account for the size, location or chemistry of the enriched stock.

The war makes the technical file secondary in capitals and primary in Vienna. Inspectors need gates, escorts and power at the plants. Those conditions do not exist at Natanz, Fordow or Isfahan while strikes continue. Bushehr, a power reactor built with Russian help, is the exception because both sides have treated it as a civilian plant that should not be hit.

Grossi’s public line is that the nuclear issue will not move until the military one does. That is an admission of sequence, not of indifference. The 408 kilograms, if they still exist in usable form, remain the most closely watched cache of enriched uranium on earth. The September paper tells member states that the agency cannot say where those kilograms are. That sentence is the news.