Neutralizing Iran’s Nuclear Material During a War Is ‘Nearly Mission Impossible’
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
America went to war in Iran, we’re told, because the idea of the country developing nuclear weapons was intolerable. Nukes are complicated and technical weapons that require scientists and experts to build, maintain, and manage. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is core to the design and unless all of Iran’s HEU is accounted for the threat of it becoming a nuclear power will linger.
So what would it take to get rid of Iran’s stockpile HEU?
François Diaz-Maurin is on Angry Planet today to answer that question. Diaz-Maurin is editor for nuclear affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists where he recently published an article outlining what it would take for US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium.
- How a civil engineer becomes a nuclear journalist
- “You can’t bomb away nuclear material.”
- “Technically, it’s nearly Mission Impossible.”
- How much highly enriched uranium (HEU) was left after last year’s strikes?
- Moving HEU around Iran
- What we can learn from satellite photos and the International Atomic Energy Agency
- Why 60%?
- Managing scuba tanks full of gaseous toxins in a war zone
- Why blowing up the cylinders won’t work
- “Let me throw something weird at you.”
- Downblending versus exporting
- We’re living in the third nuclear age
- Deterrence works and that’s, maybe, not great?
Trump may send US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium. There are no good options
Netanyahu says Iran no longer has uranium enrichment capacity
Iran willing to dilute uranium stockpile as fresh protests erupt
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. |
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| 0:09.1 | Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:17.6 | Hey there, Angry Planet listeners. |
| 0:19.5 | Matthew here today. |
| 0:20.6 | We are going to talk to Francois Diyos Maran about Iran, about what it might look like to actually handle Iran's nuclear program. It's a pretty fascinating conversation. Let's jump in. |
| 0:32.9 | You didn't know. You didn't know that, right? It's my first podcast ever, and I reserved my first one for you. |
| 0:41.5 | Well, thank you very much. That's very big news. I mean, I read the thing and I was just like, I got to get, I got to get you on to talk to you about this because it's so fascinating. Can you introduce yourself? |
| 0:53.3 | Yeah, sure, Matt. So I am currently the editor for Nuclear Affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. |
| 1:02.0 | And so in that capacity, I focus, you know, I help experts explaining nuclear risks, |
| 1:10.0 | everything that relates to, from nuclear energy to nuclear waste and |
| 1:14.0 | obviously nuclear weapons. |
| 1:16.3 | So everything nuclear at the bulletin. |
| 1:18.9 | And so I really work at the intersection between, you know, nuclear technology, global security. |
| 1:25.7 | And apparently now also the physical realities of disarming |
| 1:30.0 | a nation by force. |
| 1:32.1 | Yeah, that was what I think really struck me when I read this is that I had not seen anyone |
| 1:40.6 | really lay out, okay, so ostensibly the goal of this war is to make sure that |
| 1:48.9 | Iran no longer has a nuclear capability. What do you actually have to do physically to make |
| 1:56.0 | sure that that happens? So before we kind of get into this, just like, because you have told me this story before, |
| 2:03.9 | and I thought it was pretty fascinating when we met last year, will you kind of give me your |
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