May 2026
By Matthew Bunn

U.S. President Donald Trump’s April 1 address to the nation on the war on Iran offered a torrent of lies and no solutions.¹ Far from freeing the United States from “the specter of nuclear blackmail,” it appears that this war will leave a greatly weakened but embittered and harder-lined Iranian regime that is more determined than ever to build a nuclear deterrent. Although on-again, off-again talks are still underway, as of late April, Iran still retains much of the material and equipment needed to do so. That includes enough weapons-usable highly enriched uranium (HEU) for more than 10 nuclear bombs.

The issue is not just the HEU, however. After decades of effort by thousands of people, Iran has an array of material, equipment, and expertise that, although damaged, cannot be fully bombed away. The war will leave Iran’s government less able to defend itself but the danger of Iranian nuclear weapons will remain.

It is worth remembering how we got to this point. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran agreed to stringent limits on its uranium enrichment, exported 97 percent of its enriched uranium to Russia, and accepted inspections going far beyond usual International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.² But Trump pulled out of the deal in his first term, freeing Iran to produce HEU, develop more advanced centrifuges, and abandon the deal’s inspection provisions.

If Trump had not pulled out of the JCPOA, Iran’s stockpile of HEU—its shortest path to the bomb—would not exist. Trump’s claim that if he had not pulled out, Iran would now have nuclear weapons is simply a lie. (If, however, the United States and its partners had wasted the time the deal offered and no further accords had been reached, the sunset clauses on the limits Iran had accepted would be starting to kick in.) Moreover, before this war, Iran offered to blend down its HEU so it could not be used in weapons, pause all enrichment for several years, and not stockpile enriched uranium—an offer Trump rejected, without exploring whether it could be improved, in favor of war.³

To be fair, there is no doubt that the military attacks during Trump’s second term have been a major setback for Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s major non-reactor nuclear facilities were seriously damaged in the airstrikes Israel and the United States carried out in June 2025; those attacks also killed several prominent scientists and engineers associated with Iran’s nuclear program. None of its uranium enrichment or conversion facilities appear to have been operable after those strikes.⁴ The current war, which began February 28, appears to have done some modest additional damage to Iran’s nuclear efforts, including hitting the entrance to the Natanz enrichment facility with bunker-buster bombs, further ensuring it could not readily be returned to operation.

Nevertheless, although this war will have lasting and far-reaching effects on everything from global geopolitics to oil prices to the U.S. reputation in the world, there is little evidence it will prevent a future Iranian nuclear weapon. Iran’s nuclear program is far from “obliterated.” Indeed, by dramatically increasing Iran’s resolve to acquire a nuclear deterrent and leaving key material and some equipment and expertise in place, I believe that the war’s net effect will be to increase, rather than decrease, the probability that Iran will have nuclear weapons a decade from now.

Key issues in assessing this judgment include the fate of Iran’s HEU; its other stocks of enriched uranium; its centrifuges and components to make them; and its weaponization-related equipment and expertise. They also include Iran’s incentives to pursue nuclear weapons; the ability of intelligence agencies to detect a future move toward nuclear weapons in time to stop it; and the need, ultimately, to find a new path to agreed restraints and effective international monitoring.

The Dangers of Iran’s Surviving HEU

The most immediate concern is the roughly 441 kilograms of HEU enriched to 60 percent U-235 that Iran had accumulated before the summer 2025 strikes.⁵ This material was stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), in canisters similar to scuba tanks. Most, perhaps all, of this material appears to have survived last summer’s strikes and this year’s war.⁶ This is the material that Iran could most readily use to produce nuclear weapons, and it might pose broader hazards as well.

First, Iran might choose to enrich this material to 90 percent or more U-235 to use it in the weapon design that Iran was working on in the secret nuclear weapons program it largely stopped in late 2003.⁷ With just 100 of the advanced centrifuges it has developed since Trump’s pullout from the nuclear deal in his first term, Iran could further enrich enough material for a bomb in just a few weeks. If Iran still has access to all of the 60 percent enriched HEU stock, it would be enough, once further enriched, for more than 10 nuclear weapons.

Second, even without further enrichment, the 60 percent enriched material, once converted to metal, could be used in a bomb. It could be put in a weapon of the same design, exploding with less power, or it could be used in a modified design using more material and explosives.⁸ Indeed, this material could be used to make several simple “gun-type” nuclear weapons comparable to the Hiroshima bomb, which could be made quickly, although Iran would likely have to rely on covert means of delivery as the bombs would be too heavy for its missiles.

Beyond Iran using this material itself, there are other concerns. Nobody knows who might take possession of it in the resulting chaos if Iran’s government collapses. Even without a government collapse, the current crisis might lead some lower-level people managing the HEU to decide they needed to get out of the country; they might see selling this material as their golden ticket, although transporting the material in its current form would be a challenge. If the material falls into the hands of terrorists, multiple studies by the U.S. and other governments have warned that a sophisticated extremist group with HEU might well be able to make a crude bomb. As with the Iranian government, however, they would first have to convert it to metal, which would be an additional challenge.⁹

Where is Iran’s HEU Now?

A critical question is what has happened to this dangerous material as a result of the U.S. and Israeli attacks. Logically, there are three possibilities: It was in canisters that were destroyed in the June 2025 bombings and is no longer available because it is scattered over the walls, floors, and rubble; it was in canisters at sites that were bombed but the canisters remained intact and could be recovered by digging down into the facilities; or, it is in canisters that were at facilities that were not destroyed and could be recovered.

Unfortunately, it appears that most of Iran’s HEU is in this third category, although possibly blocked by rubble at the entrances that would have to be cleared to access it. The IAEA has noted that before the 2025 strikes, much of the HEU, as well as Iran’s 20 percent enriched U-235, was stored in deep underground tunnels near the nuclear facility outside the city of Isfahan.¹⁰ In particular, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi has reported that more than 200 kilograms of it was stored there before the strikes. The IAEA has not been permitted to visit since then.¹¹

Some reports suggest that other portions of Iran’s HEU were stored in a deep underground facility near Natanz known as Pickaxe Mountain, and in the enrichment site at Fordow, one of the locations bombed in 2025.¹² It is at least possible that Iran removed the HEU from some or all of these facilities before those strikes, as vehicles were seen at these facilities in the days before military action began.

In late March 2026, a satellite photograph surfaced that was taken June 9, 2025, just days before last year’s strikes began, showing a flat-bed truck outside the entrance to the Isfahan tunnel complex carrying more than a dozen 1.1-meter diameter containers. The truck was accompanied by another truck with a mobile crane, perhaps for lifting the containers, and vehicles that might be security vehicles. No definitive judgments can be made from this single photograph: it does not reveal what was in the containers, or even whether the truck was going into the tunnel complex or backing out of it. One plausible explanation is that Iran moved even more HEU into the Isfahan tunnel complex as protection from the attacks it expected were coming. The containers could be HEU canisters with overpacks for safe transport.¹³

The tunnels at Isfahan are significantly deeper than the underground Fordow enrichment facility that was seriously damaged by U.S. “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” bombs in the 2025 strikes, and they have not been destroyed. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly acknowledged that the Isfahan tunnels are too deep to destroy with current bunker-buster bombs.¹⁴ The tunnels at Pickaxe Mountain are also deep and the mountain is granite, making those tunnels at least as challenging a target.

Although the tunnel complex near Isfahan has not been destroyed, the entrance was bombed, raising the question of how difficult it would be to get at the containers in the tunnels. Trump has asserted that “it would take months” to dig down to get the “nuclear dust” in these tunnels; in one interview, he said the HEU was “so far underground, I don’t care about that.”¹⁵

Yet a wide range of public evidence suggests Trump is wrong about how hard this material would be to reach. First, in bilateral talks before the ongoing war, and in the Islamabad talks during the ceasefire, the Trump administration demanded that Iran export this material, and Iran, before the war, offered to blend it down—implying that both sides thought Iran could get access to it. Second, substantial press reporting indicates that planning for a possible operation to seize or destroy this HEU includes construction equipment to excavate the rubble, suggesting that this work could be done fairly quickly.16 Third, the IAEA has made clear that it sees this material as a major continuing concern; it has observed “regular vehicular activity” around the tunnel entrances since the bombings last summer, although Grossi has said that activity did not include major digging.17 Finally, there are some reports that the material is already accessible.¹⁸

What is Next for Iran’s HEU?

If airstrikes alone will not solve the problem of the HEU in these deep tunnels, there are a few other options. One is surveillance and deterrence. Trump seems to be leaning toward simply leaving the HEU where it is and watching to make sure Iran does not remove it from the tunnels. As he put it in his April 1 address, the United States has the HEU “under intense satellite surveillance.… If we see them make a move, even a move for it, [we] will hit them with missiles very hard again.”¹⁹ Leaving more than 10 bombs’ worth of HEU in Iran, however, while relying only on a return to war to prevent its use, is hardly an effective long-term solution.

Another route the Trump administration is trying to pursue is negotiating a deal with Tehran to remove the material. In the JCPOA, Iran agreed to export nearly all of its enriched uranium to Russia. In the talks before the ongoing war, and apparently again in the Islamabad talks, the Trump team demanded that Iran export the HEU to the United States; Iran rejected that idea but offered to blend it down to lower levels of enrichment in Iran. As of mid-April 2026, there were no signs that Iran was willing to accept U.S. demands for exporting this material.

A deal, if one could be reached, would be a far more practical and less dangerous approach than any military option. Over the years, HEU has been removed from many cooperative countries. One early example was Project Sapphire, in which U.S. teams worked with Kazakhstan in 1994 to fly 1,280 pounds (580 kilograms) of HEU to safe storage in Tennessee.²⁰ Programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative and its successor, Material Management and Minimization, have removed tons of plutonium and HEU from scores of sites around the world. Indeed, more than half of all countries that once had HEU or plutonium separated from spent fuel on their soil have shipped it back to its country of origin, ensuring that terrorists will not be able to obtain weapons-usable nuclear material from the emptied locations.

Even a cooperative approach would not be easy. Whatever rubble may be blocking the entrances to the site or sites where the Iranian HEU now exists would have to be cleared and the HEU canisters would have to be assessed, measured, and carefully packaged. Then, they would have to be transported out of the tunnels, trucked to an available airstrip, and flown to a country willing to accept the HEU.

Without Iran’s cooperation, the remaining option for eliminating the HEU would be sending in a team of U.S. or Israeli soldiers and experts to deal with the material. U.S. special operations forces have long trained with federal scientists and experts to disable or secure adversaries’ nuclear weapons and material,²¹ but a military operation would not be easy. Removing the material would require taking all the steps of the cooperative approach, except it would be in the middle of a war zone. There are probably dozens of containers, collectively weighing tons, in multiple locations deep inside Iran—a country as big as France, Germany, and Spain combined. Troops would probably need to collect the material from several facilities (possibly including digging through rubble at the entrances), secure an airstrip near each, truck or helicopter the equipment and material to and from the strip, and defend against attacks on the preparations and shipments. Flying everything out of Iran in the face of remaining air defenses would be another hazardous operation.

U.S. and Israeli air power might be able to devastate Iranian forces near the HEU sites, clearing the way for the deployment of U.S. troops. Trump has said he would only authorize a ground operation if Iran was “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level.”²² However, there may well be extensive booby traps and other defenses in the tunnels (and possibly decoy canisters that would have to be distinguished from the real ones), and Iranian missiles and drones could threaten the troops on the surface. Mark Esper, a defense secretary in Trump’s first term, has warned that sending ground troops into Iran to address the HEU stockpile would take a large force and be “very perilous.”²³

A simpler but messier option than removal would be to blow up the containers, with explosives attached to each one. The UF6 would end up on the walls, floors, and rubble in the tunnels, making it difficult to ever recover and use. The tunnels would then be contaminated and unusable, and the U.S. team would need to be careful about its own safety.

Blending the material to low-enriched uranium (LEU) so it could not support an explosive nuclear chain reaction is another option. Doing that on-site would also be difficult, requiring the delivery of equipment and tons of uranium for blending into an active war zone. The National Nuclear Security Administration has developed mobile equipment for packaging HEU in the past, although it has never been used to downblend hundreds of kilograms of UF6, let alone doing that in a war zone.²⁴ The result of such a blend-down would be many tons of LEU. Enrichment is a process that speeds up as it goes, so that when uranium has been enriched to 5 percent, two-thirds of the work of enriching to 90 percent is already done. That is why the JCPOA limited Iran to only 300 kilograms of LEU at a time. Leaving many times that amount in Iran would pose a serious risk that it could be re-enriched in the future.

Could Washington know for sure that it had secured all the HEU, whether by the cooperative or non-cooperative options? Before the June 2025 strikes, the nuclear material was all monitored by the IAEA. The agency knows how many canisters there were, and the serial numbers of each one, but no international inspectors have seen this material since then. What if U.S. forces found 70 percent of those canisters? Would they be confident the rest were deeply buried under rubble at such sites as Natanz and Fordow, and not held in some secret stockpile?

Iran’s Other Uranium

HEU is not the only issue. Before the June 2025 strikes, Iran also had 181 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent U-235, more than six metric tons of 5 percent enriched LEU, more than two metric tons of 2 percent enriched LEU, and likely a large amount of uranium in UF6 that was not yet enriched.²⁵

Material such as 5 percent LEU cannot be used directly in a nuclear bomb, but as just noted, it would provide a two-thirds head start on enriching all the way to 90 percent. If further enriched, the stock of 20 percent enriched material would be enough for one to two nuclear weapons, whereas the stock of 5 percent would be enough for roughly a dozen.

What has happened to this material? The IAEA reports that the 20 percent enriched uranium also was stored in the deep tunnels at Isfahan, and thus it, too, is probably available to Iran, with some effort. The 5 percent, 2 percent, and unenriched material was stored in huge 30B containers, weighing nearly three metric tons when full. Many of these containers are thought to have been at the above-ground nuclear facility at Isfahan, where the UF6 is produced from uranium oxide, but some may have been at the bombed enrichment plants at Fordow and Natanz, and may be in either intact or ruptured containers buried in the rubble.²⁶ Publicly at least, little is known about how much of this material may have survived; U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies presumably know more, but this stock again raises the question of how confident the U.S. and Israeli governments could be that there were no secret stockpiles.

Iran’s Centrifuges and Centrifuge Parts

The 2025 U.S. and Israeli attacks severely damaged Iran’s main enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow. It is unlikely that any of the centrifuges at either site are still operable. Other strikes hit known facilities for assembling centrifuges and making key parts.

Nevertheless, there are serious questions about what centrifuge capabilities still remain. As Grossi has noted, at the time of the JCPOA, Iran was primarily relying on “a very primitive type of centrifuge.” Since Trump’s pullout from the nuclear deal, there have been no restraints on Iran’s development of more advanced machines, and it “has the most sophisticated, fast, and efficient” centrifuges, meaning that the enrichment needed to produce bomb material could be done faster, by fewer centrifuges, in an easier-to-hide facility.²⁷

One innovation of the JCPOA was that it established a system of monitoring Iran’s production of centrifuges, but that ended after Trump pulled out of the accord; Iran has been producing centrifuges and centrifuge parts for years without any monitoring. It would be surprising if Iran had not dispersed centrifuges and the parts for them to a wide range of locations; Grossi has warned that there may be “dozens of workshops” for this purpose.²⁸ It is hard to know whether U.S. and Israeli intelligence have been able to find and target all those places.

Pickaxe Mountain is a particular concern. Iran has described that facility as a plant for assembling centrifuges, yet reportedly it was not yet operational when the 2025 attacks began. There may well be stocks of centrifuges and the parts to assemble more there, and like the tunnel complex at Isfahan, it is too deep to be reached by U.S. bunker-buster bombs. More worrisome, the complex there is too big for just assembling centrifuges—big enough to assemble them, set up cascades to enrich uranium, have facilities to convert the uranium to metal, and then turn the metal into nuclear weapons.

Weaponization Equipment and Expertise

From the late 1990s until fall 2003, Iran had a serious covert program to design and build nuclear weapons and carry out a nuclear test. The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered a halt to the visible weaponization parts of that program in late 2003, while enrichment efforts continued apace. Part of the dispute between Iran and the IAEA has had to do with what happened to materials and equipment from that past program.²⁹ Since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, there have been new or renewed activities in Iran that Grossi has described as “concerning.”³⁰ Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies dropped from their annual threat assessment that Iran had not resumed its weaponization effort.

During the 2025 strikes, several locations that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted were associated with potential weaponization activities were destroyed, most likely along with some equipment related to weaponization. The necessary equipment, however, is not especially unique or difficult to rebuild.

Iran’s deeply buried facilities, including the tunnels at Isfahan and the facility at Pickaxe Mountain, remain an ongoing concern. They are largely immune to air attack, and one effect of the 2025 strikes was to educate Iran about how deep they had to dig to protect their facilities. It is difficult to know what equipment and materials may be stored there—or what secret locations intelligence agencies have not yet managed to locate.

The loss of the people who have been killed by Israeli strikes might inhibit an Iranian effort to rebuild a weapons program even more than the loss of equipment and facilities. After several assassinations in previous years, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, leader of the past nuclear weapon program, the IDF asserted that it killed some 20 weapon scientists and engineers in the 2025 strikes and has announced additional deaths during the 2026 war.³¹

Never before has a state undertaken such a large-scale killing campaign against the people participating in a nuclear program. The loss of these figures is undoubtedly a setback for any effort Iran might undertake to pursue nuclear weapons in the future. But how large a setback? The overall Iranian nuclear program has involved thousands of people, and the functions most related to weaponization likely had scores to hundreds of participants. Clearly, some people are more important to an overall program than others, so it may be that the people who have been killed were very central to the effort. Without detailed intelligence information, the overall impact is difficult to judge. Yet it seems very likely that with time, other experts will be able and willing to take the place of those who have been killed, should Iran decide to pursue nuclear weapons.

Nuclear-Weapon Incentives

Such a decision appears to be a real possibility. After this war, Iran is likely to have stronger incentives to build nuclear weapons than ever before. It has been attacked twice in the past year by powers with overwhelmingly greater conventional military power. The tools it relied on before this to deter attack—the regional groups it armed and supported, its missile fleet, and its nuclear latency—have utterly failed and are far weaker than they once were. Hard-line members of parliament have already submitted legislation requiring Iran to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), although it is not clear when that could be voted on, as parliament has not been gathering during the war. The NPT “has had no benefit for us,” according to Ebrahim Rezaei, a spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission.³²

Khamenei, the supreme leader who ordered a halt to the weaponization program in late 2003 and wrote a fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons, is dead. Mojtaba Khamenei, his son and successor, is reportedly even harder-line and closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) than his father.³³ The opening attacks of the 2026 war reportedly killed his father, mother, wife, teenage son, sister, and brother-in-law and seriously injured him.³⁴ That hardly seems likely to incline him toward a softer line toward the countries that attacked. He reportedly opposed his father’s fatwa against nuclear weapons and could readily reverse it. Below Khamenei, it appears that hard-liners in the IRGC, many of whom have long believed that Iran should build nuclear weapons, are increasingly in charge.

In short, it appears that although the June 2025 attacks and the 2026 war have reduced Iran’s capability to develop and build nuclear weapons, these attacks have built incentives for Iran to do so that are greater than ever before and put people in charge who are likely to be inclined to move in that direction.

The major problem Iranian bomb advocates face is the risk that such an effort would again be attacked before it could be completed. The U.S. and Israeli attacks of June 2025 and the 2026 war have revealed just how deeply Iran’s nuclear program was penetrated by Israeli and Western intelligence agencies, who were able to find and target a range of secret facilities and nuclear program participants. Iran has arrested hundreds of people in its effort to eliminate the spies, but clearly, any effort to launch a renewed nuclear weapon program at secret facilities would run a serious risk of being discovered and attacked.

Relying on Intelligence Success

The impressive military successes of the June 2025 strikes and the current war have been based on even more remarkable intelligence successes, which uncovered what Iran was doing in its nuclear program, where it was taking place, and, in many cases, who was doing it, down to the level of which bedroom particular people were sleeping in.

At the same time, the attacks have meant an end to any international inspection of Iran’s key nuclear facilities. Although Iran permitted safeguards inspectors to return to the nuclear power reactor at Bushehr and the Tehran Research Reactor, no one from the IAEA has seen any of Iran’s enriched uranium, centrifuges, or other key equipment since before the June 2025 attacks. The United States, Israel, and other countries concerned about Iran’s nuclear program have had to rely entirely on the continuing success of intelligence agencies in finding every secret nuclear effort.

So far, that success has been impressive, dating back many years, from the discovery of the secret Fordow uranium enrichment plant before the first centrifuge was installed in the 2000s to Israel’s theft of the vast archive of nuclear weapons documents from Iran. But how long will that success last? Some human and electronic sources have probably been destroyed or compromised during the recent attacks, and Iran’s government may have succeeded in uncovering others in its intensified counter-spy efforts.

The fact is that a nuclear weapons program need not be large. An enrichment plant capable of producing enough HEU for a bomb every year might be smaller than a typical supermarket and use a comparable amount of power. The facility for converting that uranium to metal and machining the metal into bomb components might be smaller still. The facility for assembling the nuclear weapons and fitting them to delivery vehicles would not need to be large either. Will intelligence agencies always be able to find these in time?

Consider, for example, the facility that Iran was building for manufacturing nuclear weapons decades ago, when its nuclear weapons program was at full throttle. When the program halted in 2003, Iran had dug out tunnels under a mountain for this facility and purchased the necessary equipment, although it was not yet installed. Neither U.S. nor Israeli intelligence had identified the construction as a nuclear facility. (To be fair, with no nuclear-related equipment installed, that would have been hard to do.)³⁵

The Need for a Deal

At this writing, the Islamabad talks seem to have left a vast gap between American and Iranian proposals. There appears to be a substantial chance that Trump will end the war against Iran with the HEU still in Iran, no agreed limits on Iranian enrichment, no international monitoring in place, and a harder-line regime in charge in Iran. Trump himself has raised the possibility that Iran would renew its nuclear weapons program, forcing a future U.S. president to attack Iran again.³⁶ Any negotiated agreement that led to that result would be justly described as a terrible deal, although Trump is trying to pitch this result as a victory.

Ultimately, Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. With time and motivation, destroyed facilities can be rebuilt. Diplomacy provides the only long-term approach that can potentially provide lasting, stringent limits, effective international monitoring, and reduce the sense of threat that is the best argument for Iran’s nuclear weapon advocates. Provisions to accomplish those objectives were central to the JCPOA. As Grossi put it:

“[O]nce the military effort comes to an end, we will still inherit a number of major issues that have been at the center of all of this… a lot still has survived. They have the capabilities, they have the knowledge, they have the industrial ability to [pursue nuclear weapons]. This is why we need to go back to a negotiating table.”³⁷

Trump’s team is continuing to seek a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, the Strait of Hormuz, and other matters. But the president seems to believe that making extreme threats and sending negotiators with no nuclear expertise, verification expertise, Iran expertise, or sanctions expertise will be sufficient to reach an effective deal. That stands in stark contrast to the deep expertise the Obama administration’s negotiation team brought to the table—in talks that stretched over years, not hours.

Insisting, as the Trump team reportedly is, on Iran agreeing to zero uranium enrichment forever is neither necessary nor wise. A deal for zero would not buy very much extra security, as Iran could move from zero quickly, having demonstrated in the past that it can install 1,000 centrifuges—enough to launch a bomb program—in a month.  Moreover, Iran’s government has consistently rejected an enrichment ban for decades, framing it as colonial powers seeking to take away Iran’s God-given right to technological development.  Similarly, insisting that Iran export its HEU to the United States—the country that has just been attacking it—rather than to its uneasy partner Russia, is almost certainly non-negotiable. It is precisely because Russia might be willing to aid Iran if the United States reneged on a deal that a Russian option would have some small chance of being negotiable.

With Trump having pulled out of the JCPOA and twice launched military strikes while talks on new deals were underway, Iran now has very little reason to believe any promises that the United States makes, and a strong incentive to preserve its nuclear options. Nor does Washington have much reason to believe Iranian promises, despite the fact that Iran, unlike the United States, complied with the 2015 nuclear deal. The 2025 strikes and the 2026 war, although setting back Iran’s nuclear capabilities, may well have ruined the chances for negotiating an effective nuclear deal for many years to come.

ENDNOTES

1. Donald Trump, “Address to the Nation on Military Operations in Iran,” The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 1, 2026.

2. Gary Samore, ed., “The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide,” Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, November 2017.

3. Kelsey Davenport, “U.S. Negotiators Were Ill-Prepared for Serious Nuclear Negotiations with Iran,” Arms Control Association, March 15, 2026.

4. David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Spencer Faragasso, et al., “Comprehensive Updated Assessment of Iranian Nuclear Sites Five Months After the 12Day War,” Institute for Science and International Security, November 21, 2025.

5. For the quantity, see International Atomic Energy Agency, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2026/8, February 27, 2026, p. 7.

6. Julien E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, Christian Triebert, Eric Schmitt, and Ronen Bergman, “Iran Could Retrieve Uranium at Site U.S. Bombed Last Year, Officials Say,” The New York Times, March 7, 2026.

7. Aaron Arnold, Matthew Bunn, Caitlin Chase, Steven E. Miller, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, and William H. Tobey, “The Iran Nuclear Archive: Impressions and Implications,” Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, April 2019.

8. Matt Kaplan, “Implosion Nuclear Weapons with 60%-Enriched Uranium,” Science & Global Security, Vol. 33, No. 1-3 (2025), pp. 89-101.

9. For an unclassified example, see Chapter 5, “The Non-State Adversary,” in Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards, U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Washington, D.C., OTA, 1977.

10. IAEA, GOV/2026/8, p. 4.

11. Forrest Crellin, “Much of Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium likely to be in Isfahan, IAEA’s Grossi says,” Reuters, March 9, 2026.

12. Julian Borger, “US weighs sending forces into Iran to secure nuclear stockpile, reports say,” The Guardian, March 19, 2026.

13. See, for example, François Diaz-Maurin, “Analysis: Iran likely transferred highly enriched uranium to Isfahan before the June strikes,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 29. 2026.

14. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen, “US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target,” CNN, June 28, 2025.

15. Trump April 1 address transcript; Steve Holland, “US to leave Iran ‘pretty quickly’ and return if needed, Trump tells Reuters,” Reuters, April 1, 2026.

16. Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson, Alex Horton, and Karen DeYoung, “Risky commando plan to seize Iran’s uranium came at Trump’s request,” Washington Post, April 1, 2026.

17. The vehicular activity is mentioned in IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” p. 4. Grossi mentions the lack of evidence of efforts to recover and remove the material in Crellin, “Much of Iran’s Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium Likely to Be at Isfahan.”

18. Barnes, et al., “Iran Could Retrieve Uranium.”

19. Trump April 1 address transcript.

20. Togzhan Kassenova, “Project Sapphire: How to Keep 600 Kilograms of Kazakh Highly Enriched Uranium Safe,” War on the Rocks, April 1, 2022.

21. See, for example, Walter T. Ham IV, “Highly specialized US Army teams train to disable any potential enemies’ nuclear capabilities,” U.S. Army, January 25, 2024; Joseph Trevithick, “Loose Nukes In Iran Is A Scenario U.S. Special Operators Have Been Training For,” The War Zone, June 18, 2025.

22. Borger, “U.S. weighs sending forces.”

23. Ellen Mitchell, “Esper: Sending special forces to find enriched uranium in Iran would be ‘very perilous’ mission,” The Hill, March 10, 2026.

24. “The Mobile Packaging Program: An origin story,” National Nuclear Security Administration, November 16, 2022.

25. IAEA, GOV/2026/8, p. 7.

26. Interviews.

27. “Transcript: International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi on ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,’” CBS News, March 22, 2026.

28. Ibid.

29. Arnold et al., “The Iran Nuclear Archive.” For a useful summary of the IAEA’s investigations of these issues, see Kelsey Davenport, “IAEA Investigations of Iran’s Nuclear Activities,” Arms Control Association, February 2025.

30. Grossi on Face the Nation.

31. “Significance of the Targeted Nuclear Scientists in the 12-Day War,” Institute for Science and International Security, July 15, 2025.

32. Maziar Motamedi, “As war rages, Iranian politicians push for exit from nuclear weapons treaty,” Al Jazeera, March 28, 2026.

33. See, for example, Karim Sadjapour, “The Iranian Regime Doubles Down,” The Atlantic, March 10, 2026; Patrick Clawson and Farzin Nadimi, “What Kind of Supreme Leader Would Mojtaba Khamenei Be?” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 5, 2026.

34. Details of the deaths in that initial strike have not been made public, and accounts vary. This one is based on an interview with Iran’s Ambassador to Cyprus. See Helena Smith, “Mojtaba Khamenei was hurt in strike that killed his father, Iran’s Cyprus ambassador confirms,” The Guardian, March 11, 2026.

35. Arnold et al., “The Iran Nuclear Archive.”

36. David Sanger, “Trump says he halted the nuclear threat from Iran. Evidence suggests otherwise.” The New York Times, March 31, 2026.

37. Grossi on Face the Nation.

May 2026

Syria faces daunting challenges as it seeks to recover from its 2011-2024 civil war. Rebuilding its battered economy, reconstructing its devastated infrastructure, standing up a competent government and repairing trust within its national polity are all on the list. None of the trials is as unique, or sordid, as coping with the chemical weapons legacy of former President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown in 2024 and fled to Russia. Experts consider his government’s extensive use of chemical weapons the most significant challenge to the international nonproliferation regime in the 21st century. Last year, Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shibani called the Assad regime’s chemical weapons abuses “one of the darkest chapters” in world history and promised the new government in Damascus would work to dismantle what is left, adhere to international norms and ensure accountability for past wrongs. Syria’s ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Mohamad Katoub, is the man charged with working with the organization on these goals, which are complicated by the fact that Assad kept the program top secret. Katoub discussed the Syria-OPCW mission April 16 over Zoom with Arms Control Today publisher Daryl G. Kimball and Carol Giacomo, the journal’s chief editor. The interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Arms Control Today: You were appointed last year to head Syria’s mission to the OPCW in part because of your personal encounter with chemical weapons and the victims of chemical attacks during the Syrian civil war. Why is it important to complete the unfinished task of dealing with the Assad regime’s deadly chemical weapons arsenal?

Ambassador Mohamad Katoub: The approach of the Syrian government is based on three pillars. First is the safety of our people and the national security of Syria. Those remnants of chemical weapons are dangerous in case they’ll go to the wrong hands, and also, the Syrian people don’t have the required awareness or the notification mechanism to deal with such equipment. We have sincere concerns for any civilians who have to deal with those remnants without knowing what they are, especially because many of those [chemical weapons] sites are not known to us. The second pillar concerns Syria’s obligations as a state to international law. This is coming from our belief in international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The third one is accountability and justice. Accountability and justice for Syria is peacebuilding. Without holding perpetrators accountable and bringing justice for the victims, the peace in Syria will keep being fragile. The Syrian people suffered from those chemical weapons, and part of justice is the destruction of the remnants of chemical weapons. Part of it is the guarantee of nonrecurrence of those crimes in the Syrian Arab Republic or in any other place. We have victims and their families who suffered from those chemical weapons, from the intimidation, from the propaganda, and from the denial. Many Syrians were subject to several layers of violations, not only to chemical weapons.

Look at Ghouta, as an example. The people of Ghouta were besieged for years, and they were subject[ed] to chemical weapons. Many of them were subject to forced disappearance, arrest, and were forced to leave their hometowns.… These multiple layers of violations mean that these victims need support, they need to see justice with their eyes. Part of accountability is to guarantee a nonrecurrence of the use of chemical weapons in our country, It’s much wider than the destruction of the chemical weapons. We saw ISIS developing and using chemical weapons in Syria without having a big infrastructure and advanced technology. Accountability is a measure of nonrecurrence.

ACT: How did chemical weapons (CW) use in Syria affect you personally?

Katoub: I used to work for medical aid organizations when I was in Syria, and also after I left Syria, I kept working in this sector for years. Part of the work was documenting chemical attacks. I witnessed victims of chemical attacks in my hometown, Douma; coming from the biggest attack in Ghouta; and also attacks before. People are aware mostly of attacks, which killed a big number of civilians, but this attack in Ghouta on August 21, 2013, was number 32 in Syria. There were at least 10 attacks in Ghouta before this one.

I named this the “unfortunate experience.” I had to learn to collect samples to document those attacks, to connect witnesses to the investigation bodies; I had to understand more about the conventions, the obligations of the state, how the OPCW works, how is the process of decision-making in the organization, and also how other mechanisms for accountability work in the world. I had to cooperate with different investigation bodies.

The Syria conflict is one of the most documented conflicts when it comes to CW violations. It started with the joint investigation team that was established by the UN secretary-general in 2013, and which was in Damascus the night of the Ghouta massacre, followed by investigations by the Commission of Inquiry, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council. The OPCW later established the fact-finding mission in Syria. The UN Security Council established the joint investigation mechanism, which was stopped by a veto in 2017; and then, the OPCW made a very brave and important step by establishing the investigation and identification team, [which was mandated for the first time to identify perpetrators of CW use in Syria].

I witnessed all this history—the development of investigations and working with witnesses. I remember in 2013, witnesses asking how we should document and collect samples and maintain a chain of custody and work with investigators. By 2017-2018, [they started being frustrated from being interviewed time after time without any consequences, without any results, and the question became instead of how, why we need to collect samples, why should we work on documenting those attacks. They started to lose hope. Now, it’s another opportunity. Those witnesses can speak freely now. The OPCW can have access to original documents now, can have access to witnesses where they can be interviewed in Damascus.

In February this year, we hosted an event here in the OPCW with the [Syrian] National Commission for Transitional Justice. One of the speakers was a survivor of chemical weapons; he lost his two daughters in the massacre in Ghouta. He was on the panel, speaking inside the OPCW for the first time and he said, “for me, this is a step toward justice, to speak here freely about my pain in the OPCW.” So yeah, those are the first steps. We still have a long journey.

ACT: In March at the UN, Syria announced the “Breath of Freedom” task force, a group of countries that is going to assist the Syrian government in getting rid of the remnants of the CW program established by the former government. Could you tell us about the goals of that initiative and what is known currently about the status of the CW arsenal.

Katoub: The Breath of Freedom task force is a technical group that’s working together for the purpose of elimination of the remnants of chemical weapons of the Assad era. The states [that] are members of the task force have been supporting the rights of the Syrian people in fighting chemical weapons and in demanding justice and accountability for the usage of chemical weapons. They believe in our goal.

We are facing different types of challenges when it comes to the destruction of chemical weapons. Some are related to the security situation because of the Israeli airstrikes or what’s happening now in the region or related to the remnants of conventional mines or any other remnants that might block access of inspection teams, and also to technical teams who want to do the [CW] destruction.

The second challenge is the secretive nature of the program. That means a lot of work [is needed] to collect and analyze information. We have very good progress in collecting information and sharing information with the [OPCW, which has] more technical capability than the Syrian national teams at this stage.

And the third one is the gap in the national capacity in Syria because this is not our [government’s CW] program, this is the Assad regime’s program. We knew nothing about it before the liberation except what was available publicly, but we know that Syria was subject[ed] to over 200 attacks because of those chemical weapons.

To overcome all those challenges, we need technical support, technology, and expert teams. If you look at the task force members, each one has a unique experience when it comes to dealing with chemical weapons. The elimination of the program doesn’t just involve destruction, but it is a wider scope of work that includes identifying the sites, facilitating the convoys of the inspectors, removing any remnants of conventional weapons, securing the site from any risk, [and] being prepared for medical evacuation to respond to any urgent situation.

Syria has approval from the [OPCW] Executive Council to use on-site expedited destruction in case the materials are not transferrable, or if the site doesn’t have sustainable access. So, there are certain criteria that we are working with the [OPCW] Technical Secretariat to develop for on-site expedited destruction.

The concept about establishing the task force is to create a mechanism for coordination between different states, either within the group or out of this group, [that] want to support Syria in those efforts under the verification of the Technical Secretariat. At the same time, we are trying to differentiate between the mandate of the Technical Secretariat and the obligations of the state. Certain types of support cannot be provided directly by the Technical Secretariat, given the need to maintain a clear distinction between its verification mandate and other forms of engagement. The secretariat cannot simultaneously undertake verification activities and deliver support in destruction. Accordingly, these functions should be led by the Syrian side, with the technical support of partner states.

ACT: On the Breath of Freedom task force, which countries currently are you working with, along with the OPCW? It sounds like you’re seeking additional assistance from additional states beyond the initial group.

Katoub: It’s Canada, France, Germany, Qatar, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All their contributions and support are valuable to us. Outside the group, we started conversations with some [other] states. We hope that we will get an agreement soon with Jordan.

ACT: How many sites have you been able to survey so far, and when do you think your government might be in a position to make the necessary declarations to the OPCW about what remains of the program?

Katoub: Syrian national teams identified 35 sites so far. The Technical Secretariat has a longer list of 100 sites. We are working to verify and triangulate information, as well improve the readiness of our teams, whenever the Technical Secretariat decides to share the whole list of 100 sites with us, to work with them on those sites one by one.

We were able to facilitate 26 visits to suspected sites, so many of them are still not evaluated. We have about at least six sites, which were not declared [to the OPCW] by the Assad regime, and we are working to verify the information, so hopefully we will be able to make an interim update of the declaration of the Syrian Arab Republic to the OPCW on the CW program. I’m trying to be very careful on the language here, so it will not be a final update of declaration, but an interim one.

We don’t believe that we’ll be able to have a 100-percent accurate declaration. We might keep finding other sites while digging into the information and documents that we’re finding.… We look at the experiences of other states, [which] are finding chemical weapons after World War II now, after 70 or 75 years.

The plan is to update the declaration. We have an optimistic plan that we will be able to do so this summer. Because of the situation in the Middle East, the Technical Secretariat team had to evacuate since March 17, and this means that the verification will go slower. But this doesn’t mean we will not be able to work. Our national teams have the capability and whatever administration work we can do remotely or with the teams here from The Hague, we are doing this with them.

But there are circumstances out of our hands. We have an institutional capacity gap in Syria. We have three ministries that were established from zero and are involved in the destruction of chemical weapons: defense, interior and emergency and disaster management. If we find materials that we can destroy within the capacity that we have, we’ll go forward. If not, we will consolidate those until either we have the capacity, or if this capacity or technology will be very expensive or will take too much time, then we are open to deliver those remnants to another country like what happened in 2014, when other countries were involved in the destruction of the arsenal of the Assad regime.

ACT: Have you been able to do any destruction of chemical weapons so far?

Katoub: No, so far. We are still in the reconnaissance, evaluation, and assessment phase. We still didn’t start verification. This is why I’m saying sometimes circumstances are against us. We have now the information about several sites. Next step would be to do verification, to share that information with the Technical Secretariat, [and] verify it with them, but they should either visit the sites or find alternative methods for remote verification. That happened in certain circumstances, especially if the materials or the sites are very sensitive and they can’t access the site for any reason. There are methods and tools for remote verification, like sealed cameras or others. We are considering those; nothing final yet. So, this is an ongoing conversation between us and the Technical Secretariat.

ACT: Are the sites that you’ve identified being safeguarded?

Katoub: Most of them are guarded and under the control of the Ministry of Defense. Guaranteeing that unauthorized access is blocked in situations like Syria is challenging. Since the first day after the liberation [after Assad’s ouster], the Syrian army started to secure the sites that we had information about. Still, it’s not easy to maintain the blockade of unauthorized access. This is why this mission is urgent. This is why we need to accelerate destruction and have all the resources required.

In the first year, we worked a lot on structuring the teams and pooling resources to support them. Now, we are in a phase where we started to have a clearer structure and we have resources more available to us. I can’t say we have 100-percent accurate timeline, but we have a plan with milestones, and we’ve started to progress. Until the end of the year, we should be able to verify all the information about the list of 100 sites with the Technical Secretariat. By then, we’ll be able to do the destruction within the resources and the capacities that 
we have.

This will ease the burden of safeguarding those sites, especially those that are abandoned and not under the use of the Syrian army. This is where the challenge comes from, because we need to provide surveillance for those sites. Whenever we know that there are materials of high risk or high priority, those are definitely guarded. The issue is when we have materials that should be declared and [are] in abundant sites. We need to guarantee the safety of those sites from any unauthorized access.… But whenever we have high-risk materials, yes of course, we have those safeguarded. We were able to consolidate some materials to a temporary consolidation facility, and we have one site with high-risk materials, and this is under surveillance, or under guard, from the Syrian army.

ACT: As you describe it, it’s a very complicated undertaking. Under the best circumstances, how long do you think it would take Syria and the international community to complete the dismantling and destruction of these weapons? How much will it cost?

Katoub: They are two important and technical questions. We hope that at the end of 2026 we will be able to verify the information and do evaluations for the whole list that the Technical Secretariat has. We are trying to accelerate sharing information with us about those sites, so we can verify the information with the Technical Secretariat and with the help of other states. After the evaluation, we’ll be more able to put a timeline.

This verification will help us in another thing, which is to determine what kind of technology we need for the destruction.… Destruction can happen anytime, whenever we have those materials secured, in a consolidation facility. Destruction is not the biggest problem. This can happen in Syria, or it can happen in another country.

On estimate of cost, we have a list of needs, and to be frank, unfortunately, in Syria we don’t have the experts to do evaluation or a budget estimate for those very technical needs. We know what technology we need to do all the steps before destruction—as I mentioned, destruction is based on what we find—but the list of needs includes materials and training for enabling operation, convoy command, security for the convoys, logistics, medical preparedness, site evaluation and security from mines and other aspects, chemical weapons management, protection gear, on-site destruction, and the destruction.…We still don’t have a budget for it, but.… we’ve started to receive offers from state members of the task force to fill those gaps. Some of those are in-kind, some are training, and others will need financial contributions, maybe not within the group itself, maybe coming from other members of the OPCW. But unfortunately, we don’t have a budget.

But I can mention that a number that everyone knew, the annual budget for the technical secretariat work in Syria, the estimation is about 12 million euros. That’s only the Technical Secretariat; I’m not talking about the national teams. Definitely, it will be a big budget to do all of this. We have, of course, an ultimate goal to build national capacity, not only the destruction, because after two, three, four years, Syria should be a stable country, hopefully.… and then, we should take care of the legacy of those chemical weapons. So, building the national capacity itself is a goal for us.

ACT: Could you turn to your government’s plans and strategy for holding those who you find accountable for these past crimes? I suppose that the Ministry of Justice is in the lead of that?

Katoub: In the national working group that’s working on the chemical dossier, beside the ministries of defense, emergency and disaster management, health, and foreign affairs, we have the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Interior, and the National Commission for Transitional Justice. So, the Ministry of Interior is leading the investigation in that regard. They have some good progress on that.

We were able, in an unprecedented step last October, to have the Executive Council of the OPCW decide to give access to the Syrian national accountability mechanisms to the information that was collected by the organization. This is a big step for us. We have the political decision now by the council, but we still don’t have the mechanism because this is complicated. Also, the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) established by the UN General Assembly doesn’t share information with us. We’re working with them to explore ways to do that. I’m happy we have good cooperation with them, and I think we should be able to achieve more progress.

On parallel, there is a lot of work to be done to reform the legal system in Syria. This is a big challenge, because the same system was used during the Assad era to give impunity to perpetrators for years. The same system never adapted to the obligation of the state to international law and to the conventions that Syria is part of, like the chemical weapons convention. Even the terms in this system don’t include things like war crimes or crime against humanity or genocide. The terms of still need to be adjusted.

We also have the Commission for Transitional Justice working a lot on structuring their team and also building mechanisms [to conduct] investigations. We should have some good news by the end of the year, hopefully, on the progress on accountability. I mean not that big, because, unfortunately, most high-ranking officials involved in this program fled the country. The hope is to establish the tribunal within the transitional justice system in Syria to hold those perpetrators accountable and to have those international mechanisms cooperating with it—either international organizations or also other states who can help us in holding perpetrators accountable. There are mechanisms for that, and we are very open to cooperate. We are very open to cooperating with states who use the universal jurisdiction mandate in their countries to hold perpetrators accountable, or to open the door for victims to file cases against those who used chemical weapons. We started conversations with some of them.

There are several options on the table on accountability. There was a group that discussed [potential accountability] in Syria before the liberation, before the fall of the Assad regime. Twelve states discussed several potential models of accountability for the use of chemical weapons, not only in Syria, but worldwide. From the outcome of this discussion, we take that we want the accountability mechanism to be national. Those perpetrators should be held accountable in Syria, in front of the Syrian people but of course, in cooperation with international mechanisms. This is the hope, of course. This is a long journey, again.

The expectations from the Syrian people are too high when it comes to justice. The first week of April marked the anniversaries of two chemical attacks in Syria—the one in Khan Shaykhun on April 4 and the Douma attack on April 7. On both anniversaries, the people of the two towns commemorated the victims and hosted an event, and some government representatives were there. The questions [from the people] were not about reparations. The questions were not about what those towns deserve. The questions were about when to hold those perpetrators accountable. So, they expect their government to be able to do that, and this is why we should work on it. We expect support from other states. This is another task that we here in the mission are working on. We already established the mechanism to support chemical weapon destruction, and we are working on ways to either establish or to join alliances and partnership to step forward on accountability, and to support the efforts of investigation and accountability in Syria.

ACT: One other challenge that you mentioned, of course, are the victims. How many victims have there been of these chemical attacks? What are the government’s plans to assist them, whether medical assistance or some other kind. Is this something that other countries have shown an interest in helping with?

Katoub: This is very important, actually. The number that we have from documentation is over 1,500. This is for the victims who were killed by chemical weapons. But those who were affected, the number is at least 10 times that, so at least 15,000. If you look at each one of those attacks, especially those which targeted urban areas, the victims were subject to several layers of violations: forced displacement, sometimes forced disappearance, besiegement, or others. If there were to be reparation measures, this should be part of a wider program on reparation for all the victims, not only for chemical weapons. Favoring victims based on the kind of violation that they were subject[ed] to causes a lot of damage to the community and to the society. There should be a program for the reparation for all victims in Syria.

There are ways to measure the support provided to each victim based on their needs more than based on how much they were damaged by this attack or whatever kind of violation they were subject[ed] to. Syria is trying to avoid favoring victims based on the type of violation. The second thing is, Syria does not have many resources for reparation programs. There should be a fund established to support Syrian victims, and then to have contributions from states who are willing to support this because this is peacebuilding for the country. Reparation doesn’t mean always financial support. It means acknowledgement of the pain of those people, even if it’s some minor measures that the government applies, sometimes with the help of civil society, international organizations, international community. This is very important for the peace in Syria.

The Commission for Transitional Justice is working hard on reparation measures and evaluating what measures they should provide to victims of different types. At the [Syrian] mission here in The Hague, we are encouraging academic institutions and researchers to study the long-term impact of usage of chemical weapons on communities and on individuals. We are very happy to connect anyone who wants to research this with research centers and universities in Syria because they will need labs and hospitals and clinical capacity. I encourage states to fund such programs. This is very important, not only for Syria. This is the widest use of chemical weapons after the convention was adopted in 1993. This was a wound in our hearts, and now it’s a lesson to learn from.

ACT: The Chemical Weapons Convention has near-universal support, yet some states in the Middle East have not yet joined. What message do you think your government’s commitment to completing the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria should be sending to your neighbors and others who have not yet joined this important agreement?

Katoub: Syria hopes to see all—not only neighboring countries—join this convention because Syria suffered and we know what chemical weapons use means. My memory about chemical weapon incidents that I witnessed is the fear in the eyes of the people. Terrible. Where I lived in Ghouta, during the hardest days of the siege, and I witnessed attacks, airstrikes, all kinds of weapons, barrel bombs, everything. But chemical weapons are different: You see the fear in the faces is different. because the community has the sense that nothing will protect them. Not a fortified shelter, nothing. So, chemical weapons should not be used under any circumstances in any place. If Syria sends a message to everyone, it’s that we’ve suffered enough from them. The world suffered enough from chemical weapons, and they should not be used again.