In 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly minted country of Kazakhstan held the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, left behind by the Soviets. Some of it was sitting inside a factory, vulnerable to countries like Iran and North Korea getting ahold of it Andrew Weber, a foreign service officer at the time, began pressing for more information. Months later, he learned more than 1,300 pounds of bomb-grade uranium sitting in a mothballed factory in the Far Eastern city of Ust-Kamenogorsk. Weber became the point person for a high-stakes operation, code-named Project Sapphire, to secure the uranium and bring it to the United States. “It was a crazy time after the Soviet Union fell apart. And we knew that Iran was pursuing nuclear material throughout the region,” says Weber. #sovietunion #nuclear #uranium #foreignpolicy