After airstrikes disabled Iran’s Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz sites, Tehran announced a new underground enrichment facility – already stocked with foreign-sourced uranium and shielded from IAEA scrutiny. While Western leaders still fixate on centrifuge counts and breakout timelines, Iran has spent months quietly building a uranium procurement pipeline destined for weaponization. Iran doesn’t need to sprint toward a bomb – it’s quietly building the track.
Iran claims to be building eight civilian reactors – yet it lacks the uranium to fuel even one. The numbers don’t lie.
The narrative does. As noted by assessments from the Institute for Science and International Security and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s Saghand and Gachin mines are grossly underpowered for any civilian energy goal.
Instead, Iran has pivoted: opening small-scale extraction sites at Narigan and Jang-e Sar, enriching depleted uranium, and mining ore from phosphate imports – all steps thinly veiled as peaceful but tailored for weapons-grade stockpiling.
Beyond its borders, Tehran recently secured 300 tons of yellowcake from Niger, reportedly traded for Iranian-made air defense systems and drones. As covered by Africa Intelligence and corroborated by open-source tracking, Iran is now seeking direct access to Niger’s uranium mines – deposits large enough to fuel multiple bombs annually. This deal slipped past IAEA notice – a blatant breach of reporting obligations that threatens the integrity of the safeguards regime.
BEHIND THESE procurement efforts is a single entity coordinating logistics, transport, and concealment: the IRGC.
The backbone of Iran's nuclear logistics
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is Iran’s nuclear logistics backbone. Satellite evidence and procurement trails show IRGC-controlled front companies managing uranium mining infrastructure, transport networks, and black-market inputs. As long as the IRGC remains operational and unrestricted, uranium will keep flowing underground – literally and politically.
Recent satellite imagery following the US’s June 21 Operation Midnight Hammer revealed heavy equipment at Fordow, suggesting Iran is already working to restore access to underground enrichment tunnels – even as the IAEA confirmed that enrichment at Fordow has ceased due to damage, though inspectors still lack full access. But the signal is clear: Tehran is confident enough to rebuild, and likely already has the uranium on hand to feed the next facility – wherever it may be.
Iran still requires centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. These mining and reprocessing activities do not eliminate that need – but they do solve a different problem: securing enough raw material to feed those centrifuges when the time comes.
By stockpiling undeclared uranium through mining, re-enrichment, and phosphate extraction, Iran is laying the groundwork for rapid reconstitution. If its enrichment sites are bombed or shut down, its fuel supply will survive – ready to be fed into centrifuges at a new site, hidden or rebuilt.
To contain this threat, Western policy must shift from reactive containment to proactive dismantlement:
• Trigger snapback sanctions under UN resolutions – not waiting for diplomatic channels. Every uranium-related export, mining permit, or foreign extraction partnership must be immobilized immediately.
• Designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization – not least because it is the primary operator behind these enrichment efforts, mining ventures, and covert procurement networks.
• Sanction front companies and intermediaries in the uranium network – phosphate processors, ore transporters, logistics firms, and IRGC-controlled subcontractors.
• Declassify and publicize satellite intelligence showing the disconnect between Tehran’s civilian energy narrative and its real nuclear infrastructure: multiple covert mines, opaque enrichment hubs, and a stockpile pipeline stretching across borders.
• France and the UK – already concerned about instability in the Sahel – should leverage their influence to block Iranian access to Niger’s uranium deposits before they are absorbed into the IRGC network.
Western diplomacy remains stuck in the wrong paradigm. Enrichment is not the beginning – it’s the end. A nuclear weapon program doesn’t start with cascades. It starts with a shovel in a mine, a covert delivery of yellowcake, a network of IRGC-controlled companies... Iran knows this. Its strategy is now supply-driven, resilient, and hidden.
If the uranium economy is not dismantled now, the next facility won’t need time to enrich – it will only need time to detonate.
The writer is an Iranian-American research professor and energy expert, as well as a political and human rights activist. Follow him on X: @Aidin_FreeIran.