Fox’s Bret Baier Straight-Up Asks Vance If Trump Knows Where the Enriched Uranium Is

Fox News anchor Bret Baier straight-up asked Vice President JD Vance if President Donald Trump’s administration knows where Iran’s stockpile of “highly enriched uranium” is during a Monday evening interview.

Trump flew into a rage Tuesday morning at CNN and MSNBC over skeptical reporting about the state of Iran’s nuclear program after Trump’s airstrikes.

And on Monday night’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Special Report, Baier also pressed Vance about the degree to which the program was “obliterated,” repeatedly asking Vance about the missing uranium and noting “if the Iranian government survives as is, what’s to stop it from rebuilding over time if they in fact moved the 60 percent highly enriched uranium?”:

BAIER: So you said totally obliterated. The president has said totally obliterated the Iran nuclear program.

VANCE: Yes.

BAIER: Do you know for sure where all the highly enriched uranium is?

VANCE: Well, Bret, I think that’s actually not the question before us. The question before us is, can Iran enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level, and can they convert that fuel to a nuclear weapon?

And we know, based on the success of our mission, of course, the leadership of the president, but the incredible skill of our military, that the two mission objectives are completely successful. We know that they cannot build a nuclear weapon.

Now, you asked about the highly enriched uranium.

BAIER: Yes, like 900 pounds of it.

VANCE: What — but what we know, Bret, is that uranium is something that exists in very large supply. Our goal was to bury the uranium. And I do think the uranium is buried.

But our goal was to eliminate the enrichment and eliminate their ability to convert that enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon. I actually just — I think that’s an important point, Bret, because so many of the folks who have focused on the highly enriched uranium…

BAIER: Sure, 60 percent.

VANCE: … the main focus, Bret, has been to destroy their enrichment capacity, because we don’t want that 60 percent uranium to become 90 percent uranium. That’s the real concern. And that’s what was so successful about our mission.

BAIER: So, after all this, if the Iranian government survives as is, what’s to stop it from rebuilding over time if they in fact moved the 60 percent highly enriched uranium? You know, that’s the concern.

VANCE: No, the big concern, Bret — and this is, again, what we destroyed is — their ability to enrich uranium.

If they have 60 percent in rich uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90 percent, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term.

But here’s the question. If Iran is desperate to build a nuclear weapon in the future, then they’re going to have to deal with a very, very powerful American military again. Our hope is that the lesson that the Iranians have learned here is, look, we can fly a bunker-buster bomb from Missouri to Iran completely undetected without landing once on the ground, and we can destroy whatever nuclear capacity you build up.

I think that lesson is what’s going to teach them not to rebuild their nuclear capacity.

Watch above via Fox News Channel’s Special Report.