Destroying Iran's nuclear facilities isn't enough.

If the Iranian regime keeps the uranium, nothing else matters.

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This is a guest essay by General Yoav Gallant, former Minister of Defense for the State of Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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The current campaign against the Iranian regime has one objective that justifies its immense cost: the structural elimination of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Not temporary deterrence. Not symbolic punishment. Not the destruction of selected facilities. Not the hope that military pressure alone will produce internal political transformation in Tehran. Those are not the objectives.

The objective is to remove Iran’s ability to move from nuclear threshold status to nuclear weapons capability.

That objective must be defined with precision. Iran’s nuclear program is not only a collection of buildings, tunnels, centrifuges, scientists, and procurement networks. Those are important, and many of them must be attacked, disrupted, or denied.

But they are not the center of gravity of the program. Buildings can be rebuilt. Centrifuges can be replaced. Scientists retain knowledge. Supply chains can be reconstituted over time.

The center of gravity is the physical stockpile of enriched uranium, particularly the material enriched to 60 percent and 20 percent. Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent was estimated at roughly 440 kilograms before the strikes, alongside significant additional stocks enriched to lower levels.

That material represents the accumulated result of Iran’s multi-decade nuclear effort. It is the most concentrated and strategically consequential asset in the program: small enough to move, valuable enough to hide, and dangerous enough to determine whether the campaign ends in strategic success or strategic delay.

This point is often obscured by the language of enrichment percentages. To a general audience, uranium enriched to 20 percent or 60 percent may sound meaningfully distant from the 90 percent level associated with weapons-grade material. In the physics of enrichment, the distance is far narrower than it appears.

The hard work is front-loaded.

By the time a state has accumulated substantial quantities of uranium enriched to 20 percent, and especially 60 percent, it has already completed the decisive portion of the industrial climb toward weapons-grade material. Roughly 99 percent of the enrichment work required to reach weapons-grade has already been done by the time uranium reaches the 60 percent level.

This is why the stockpile matters more than the rubble.

A destroyed enrichment hall matters. A collapsed tunnel matters. A degraded centrifuge cascade matters. These are real military achievements. They impose cost, create delay, and disrupt the adversary’s planning.

But none of them answers the decisive question: What happened to the enriched uranium?

If the campaign concludes with this material still inside Iranian territory, even buried beneath damaged facilities or dispersed to undisclosed locations, Iran’s nuclear weapons path will not have been structurally eliminated. It will have been interrupted. The regime will retain the essential fuel for reconstitution, along with the knowledge, personnel, and institutional memory required to rebuild. The next version of the program will be deeper, more dispersed, more concealed, and harder to monitor.

In that scenario, the strategic delay may be measured in months, not decades.

This is the distinction that must guide every decision now. Tactical success means damaging what Iran built. Strategic success means removing what Iran needs in order to rebuild. The campaign cannot be judged by the number of targets destroyed. It must be judged by whether Iran retains usable control over the enriched uranium stockpile.

There are only two strategic endings.

In the first ending, Iran’s visible nuclear infrastructure is badly damaged, its air defenses are degraded, its missile forces are disrupted, and its leadership absorbs a severe military blow. But the enriched uranium remains under Iranian control. That outcome may be presented publicly as victory. It is not victory. It is a temporary delay purchased at immense cost.

In the second ending, the enriched uranium is physically removed from Iran’s control. The material is transferred, surrendered, extracted, diluted, rendered unusable, or otherwise placed beyond Iran’s ability to weaponize it. The mechanism matters less than the result, provided the result is physical, verified, enforceable, and irreversible.

Only the second ending can set Iran back by decades.

The central policy question is therefore not whether Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has been hit. It is whether Iran’s nuclear option has been taken off the board. That requires verified disposition of the material. It cannot mean a press conference. It cannot mean a ceasefire declaration. It cannot mean photographs of destroyed facilities while the stockpile remains unaccounted for.

There are two paths to that outcome.

The first path is an unremitting military campaign designed to force a negotiated surrender and transfer of the material. This does not mean negotiation instead of pressure. It means negotiation conducted under pressure. Iran has shown over many years that it does not surrender core strategic assets because it is asked to do so. It yields when the cost of refusal becomes greater than the cost of concession. If diplomacy is to succeed, the pressure must not be relieved before the central objective is achieved. The purpose of force is to narrow Tehran’s choices until retaining the stockpile is no longer a viable option.

The second path is a high-risk, highly complex joint American-Israeli operation to physically retrieve or deny the material. It would require extraordinary intelligence, command discipline, operational capability, and political resolve. It would involve real risk to human life and the possibility of paying a heavy price.

But the strategic comparison is not between a dangerous option and a safe one. The comparison is between accepting the risk of paying a grave price to remove an existential threat, or leaving that threat intact and allowing it to return under worse conditions. If the enriched uranium remains available to the regime, the danger is not resolved. It is deferred.

This campaign is a narrow strategic window. The political capital, alliance cohesion, military concentration, and international legitimacy required to confront Iran’s nuclear program do not regenerate easily. A campaign of this magnitude cannot be spent twice. If it is consumed on partial outcomes, symbolic victories, or objectives that cannot be measured, the central mission will remain unfinished.

The standard must remain simple. Iran cannot retain usable control over the enriched uranium stockpile. No settlement, ceasefire, or declaration should be accepted unless the material is accounted for and removed from Iran’s control.

Anything short of that risks confusing tactical achievement with strategic decision. Destroyed facilities can delay Iran. Removed material can change the strategic reality.

The campaign will not ultimately be judged by how much Iran lost. It will be judged by what Iran still holds.

If the enriched uranium remains in Iranian hands, the campaign will have bought time. If the material is removed from the board, the campaign will have achieved something far more consequential: the structural dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons path before the window closes.

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