WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned Wednesday that Iran is “frighteningly close” to developing weapons-grade enriched uranium.

Wright said that Iran’s enriched uranium, which President Trump is dead-set on confiscating, puts the regime just weeks away from the threshold needed to get a nuke.

“They are a small number of weeks away to enrich that to weapons-grade uranium. There’s still a weaponization process that happens after that, but they’re quite close,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Special envoy Steve Witkoff publicly claimed that Iran boasted about having enough 60% enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs if further enriched to 90%.

Getting to 60% enrichment is a much larger technical leap than the jump from 60% to 90%, which is weapons-grade enrichment, according to nuclear experts.

Iran is believed to possess about 1,000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium.

The Islamic Republic is “only weeks away” from making it weapons-grade, Wright and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) agreed at the hearing.

Iran also has another 11 tons at a lower level of enrichment.

“They have some 20% enriched uranium, and that’s several more weeks behind [the] 60%,” Wright added. 

“[With] unenriched uranium, it’s a long process to get it to weapons-grade. But when you’re at 60%, you are, although the numbers don’t sound that way, you’re way [closer to] 90% of the way there for the enrichment necessary for weapons-grade uranium.”

“It’s very concerning.”

Blumenthal said Trump likely would have to get the other 11 tons of 20% enriched uranium in addition to the ton of 60% enriched uranium if he were to fully eliminate the threat. 

“I think that’s the wise strategy. Ultimately, the goal is to prevent future enrichment of uranium as well. Yes, to have a safe world, we need to end their nuclear program,” Wright replied. 

Trump has been adamant that the US will get Iran’s enriched uranium “one way or another” — but generally doesn’t specify whether Iran must surrender the smaller 60%-enriched cache or the entire stockpile.

US negotiators are seeking Iran’s relinquishment of all nuclear material, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Thus far, Tehran has balked at the request — though Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to help retrieve deeply buried uranium at three US-bombed sites if Iran were to agree to it.

Trump said Monday that Iranian negotiators privately agreed over the weekend to give America the “nuclear dust” before backtracking and delivering an inflammatory peace offer asking the US to recognize Iran as the conflict’s victor, with no nuclear concessions.

“They said, ‘You’re going to have to take it.’ We were going to go with them, but they changed their mind because they didn’t put it in the paper,” Trump said Monday.

“They told me, ‘Number one, you’re getting it, but you’re going to have to take it out,’ because the site was so obliterated that there’s only one or two countries in the world that could get it. It’s so deep and got hit so hard that there’s no way they have the equipment to move it. ‘You and China are the only two countries in the world that could take it out.’”

The US and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last year in Operation Midnight Hammer and did so again earlier this year via Operation Epic Fury. For now, the US is monitoring Iran’s nuclear sites from satellites and has threatened to bomb them if Iran starts making moves toward them. 

Trump reportedly contemplated a highly risky operation this year of sending ground forces into Iranian territory to retrieve the nuclear material. That process would be difficult because troops would have to dig out the uranium and deal with the risks of radiation exposure while deep behind enemy lines.

For the time being, he’s been attempting to solve the issue diplomatically. Currently, talks between Washington and Tehran are being mediated by Pakistan. Trump recently rejected Iran’s latest offer as “unacceptable” this past Sunday. Trump called the cease-fire with Iran on “massive life support.”

“They’ll either do the right thing, or we’ll finish the job,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance teased Wednesday that there’s been “a lot of progress” in peace talks with Iran, but refrained from delving into specifics. 

“I think that we are making progress. The fundamental question is, do we make enough progress that we satisfy the president’s red line? And the red line is very simple. He needs to feel confident that we’ve put a number of protections in place such that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Vance told reporters.

Vance has been directly involved in negotiations, having trekked to Pakistan last month for talks that were ultimately unsuccessful. The Iranians allegedly sought to negotiate with him specifically. 

“I think that we’ve made a lot of progress since we left Pakistan. I thought we made some progress in Pakistan, but we’ve made more since then,” the veep added. “The president has set us off on the diplomatic pathway for now, and that’s what I’m focused on.”