It’s being reported by CNN that Iran has been booby-trapping the entrances and tunnels that would be used to reach the enriched uranium that they must give up, which would have to be dug out from under a mountain of destruction.

Here’s the news:

In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence.

Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said.

The new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration’s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.

Iran’s diplomatic delegation to the United Nations did not immediately return a request for comment, and the White House did not immediately reply to questions from CNN.

Even for the Iranians themselves, several of the sources said, removing the enriched material would now be difficult and dangerous. It would require heavy excavation equipment and de-mining efforts — which are difficult and risky.

“If this reporting is true, it would definitely complicate … retriev[ing] the HEU,” said Scott Roecker, who headed the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Nuclear Material Removal from 2017 to 2021.

It could also offer an opportunity for Iran to obfuscate its compliance efforts.

If negotiators “require that Iran bring the entire stockpile to a central location for verification and ultimately to remove or downblend the material,” that would place the onus on Tehran to access and “provide the full inventory” of enriched uranium, Roecker said.

But, “in this scenario, I would worry that Iran would claim that some portion of the HEU was irretrievable,” Roecker said. “We wouldn’t have full confidence that Iran couldn’t retain access to it at some point in the future.”

The international community believes most of the stockpile is in collapsed tunnels at the Isfahan nuclear complex in central Iran, with some additional material held at other sites.

This is who we are making a deal with? What the hell are we doing….