Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
It takes approximately 25 kg of highly enriched uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.
That’s about the weight of a large bag of dog food or a five-gallon bucket of laundry detergent.
Iran has 440 kg of enriched uranium.
That means the ability to make 17.6 nukes.
Sort of.
You see, the uranium in Iran in question is enriched to 60%.*
And it takes >90% enrichment to make a bomb.
Now a couple of things to think about regarding that.
First of all, it only would take about a month to enrich the uranium to >90%.
As is often cited by those who are in support of the war against Iran (well, most of us consider it to be a war, not a skirmish, short excursion, trifle, or little detour, all terms used by President Trump), Iran has had a big beef with the US for 47 years.
That’s 547 months. Even if the Iranians only had the necessary equipment to refine its uranium for five years, that’s still 60 months.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed by the Obama Administration, Iran, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union in 2015. At the time Iran had some 10,000 kg of uranium. The terms of the agreement called for that to be reduced to 300 kg — which may have happened had the first Trump Administration not withdrawn from the JCPOA in May 2018.
After all, if Iran had 10,000 kg in 2015 and 440 kg in 2026, that’s a 95.6% reduction.
The other thing to think about is that “Operation Midnight Hammer,” conducted in June 2025, was said to have resulted in the “complete and total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear weapons program — and that was said by President Trump.
So: (1) Iran arguably has had a long time to make the nuclear weapons and there has been no evidence given to the American people (or anyone else for that matter, at least not publicly) that it was busy running those centrifuges and (2) presumably those centrifuges and the stockpile of uranium was obliterated last year.
So the whole “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” rationale that gets repeated doesn’t seem to be something that was in any way imminent or, if we take the president at his word, possible given the claimed obliteration.
If we can’t believe that the capabilities were totally destroyed, can we believe that Operation Epic Fury did its job and so “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”?
President Trump claims that gasoline prices will “drop like a rock” after the war and get to levels “that you’ve never seen before.”
What Americans have seen for the past 14 weeks are gas prices that have gone in the opposite direction.
Even though, according to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US is $4.24 a gallon, down about a quarter-dollar from its recent peak, on February 26, the day before Operation Epic Fury commenced, it was $2.98 per gallon.
Roughly calculated, the average midsized SUV driver in the US has paid an extra $185 for gasoline over the past 14 weeks. For the average household, that’s about what is paid for a week’s worth of groceries — and, yes, the price of groceries is up, too, because of increased freight costs (diesel fuel has gone up an average 40% since February).
And the price of groceries will continue to remain high (no rock-like dropping) because the war has resulted in a 30% reduction in the global supply of fertilizer.
Were Iran to not only develop a nuclear weapon but deploy it, gas prices and grocery prices would be through the roof, something we can’t lose sight of.
But it does seem peculiar that months after the hostilities began there has yet to be any substantive proof offered by the Trump Administration about the actual threat presented by Iran to the homeland.
On CNBC on Monday, June 8 President Trump said of the still-high gas prices, “Once you explain that this is all about Iran having a nuclear weapon, people are willing to pay a little bit more.”
Agreed. But where is the explanation?
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*Quick lesson: When uranium is mined, the material is generally 99.3% uranium-238 and 0.7% uranium-235. The U-235 is the element needed for nukes. So there is a refinement process (using centrifuges) to get rid of the U-238 and thereby getting the U-235. This process continues until >90% purity is reached.Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.