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IAEA Stockpile Reports: A Real Stockpile, No Weapons Program

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. The figures are from the IAEA's own reports, as published or as quoted by Reuters and Al Jazeera.

The honest version of the case against Iran rests on one fact: Iran had built up a large stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a level no other country without nuclear weapons produces. That fact is real. This page lays out the numbers, and what the same reports said about weapons.

The numbers​

  • Growth. Iran's 60 percent stockpile rose from about 275 kilograms in the IAEA's March 2025 figures (per the research captures) to 408.6 kilograms in the May 31, 2025 report, up 133.8 kilograms in three months (IAEA GOV/2025/24; Al Jazeera). In January 2025 Grossi had said Iran's production of 60 percent material had jumped from about 7 to more than 30 kilograms a month (Reuters, as noted in the research captures).
  • "Serious concern." The May report called it a matter of "serious concern" that Iran was "the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce such material."
  • Last count before the war. As of June 13, 2025, the day Israel attacked: 440.9 kilograms at 60 percent, 184.1 kilograms at 20 percent, and 9,874.9 kilograms of enriched uranium in all (IAEA figures, as summarized in the research captures). Reuters: "enough, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick" (Reuters, September 2026).

A full table is on The Missing Uranium.

What the reports said about weapons​

  • Old weapons work. The June 2025 safeguards report (GOV/2025/25) went back over Iran's pre-2003 activities at undeclared sites: work on neutron initiators at Lavisan-Shian, explosive tests in 2003, and ten kilograms of uranium metal, with concealment at three sites through 2018 (as listed in a June 21, 2025 post). All of that is history, most of it more than twenty years old.
  • No new weapons program. The same post conceded that the June 2025 report "fell short of validating newer Israeli intelligence claims." The IAEA's 2015 conclusion stood: it "had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009" (same post).
  • Grossi's summary. "We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon" (June 17, 2025). See Grossi's Statements.

Two things can be true​

Iran's 60 percent stockpile had no clear civilian use. The Institute for Science and International Security put it bluntly: "Iran has no civilian use or justification for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium, particularly at the level of hundreds of kilograms" (as quoted by Avi Bitterman). Iran called it leverage in negotiations. A former Reagan budget director, David Stockman, argued it was exactly that, a "bargaining chip," noting the 2015 nuclear deal had cut Iran's stockpile by 97 percent before the United States left it in 2018 (Stockman, July 16, 2026).

What the stockpile was not, according to the inspectors and US intelligence, was a bomb program. The stockpile was the subject of the talks Israel's attack cut off. See Before the War.

Status: Rafael Grossi and David Stockman are alive, as far as these sources show.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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