Nikki McCann Ramirez
View all posts by Nikki McCann Ramirez May 1, 2026
Donald Trump answers questions during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House on April 30, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Congress grilled Pete Hegseth this week over the lack of progress ending the war in Iran — and things got ugly.
The defense secretary was repeatedly pressed about the Trump administration’s ever-changing, contradictory rationale for their decision to initiate the now-months-long conflict, particularly the claim that the Middle Eastern nation was on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon.
“Do you know how much enriched uranium was [created] after you ripped up the JCPOA?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked Hegseth, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal the Obama administration struck with Iran that restricted the nation’s nuclear development capabilities.
Hegseth claimed the information is classified, but according to a new report from the The New York Times, there are fairly good estimates about how much enriched uranium Iran began producing after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal during his first administration. Now, nearly a decade after pulling out of a negotiated agreement, Trump is once again facing the long tail of his own recklessness.
According to the Times, in the eight years since Trump scuttled the JCPOA, Iran has accumulated 11 tons of enriched uranium — up from the 660-pound limit imposed by the previous deal. In 2018, when the president pulled out of the deal, Iran did not have enough materials to produce even one bomb. Now, it has not only increased the amount of enriched uranium in its stockpiles exponentially, but the grade of enrichment has also skyrocketed to levels just short of the necessary grade to create a nuclear weapon.
Still, the Trump administration’s claims that the current conflict was necessary because Iran posed an imminent nuclear debt remain dubious. There is no evidence that the Iranians have developed a nuclear weapon. The argument that Iran was weeks away from having a nuclear weapon when the U.S. and Israel attacked in February have been contradicted repeatedly by the Trump administration, which has said the nation’s nuclear capabilities were “obliterated” during a series of targeted strikes last year. Hegseth repeated this to lawmakers this week, adding that Iran’s “ambitions” to develop a nuclear weapon remain.
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The primary problem is not just that Iran has this stockpile of uranium, but that amid the conflict with the U.S. and Israel, they may have moved it to new locations unknown to the U.S. and international monitors.
On Friday morning, during a routine Pentagon briefing, Hegseth lashed out at his former Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin — a veteran Pentagon reporter and chief national security correspondent at the network — when she asked if the Pentagon had “certainty” that “none of that highly enriched uranium was moved,” from the Iranian nuclear facilities that were attacked last year.
