The United States is offering up to $20 million for information on Iran’s nuclear program, along with possible relocation for whoever provides it. US Central Command, the military command that oversees American forces in the Middle East, shared the offer on X Friday night on behalf of Rewards for Justice, a State Department program that pays people for tips on terrorism and national security threats.
The government wants information on Iran’s nuclear facilities, its equipment, and the people connected to the program, including scientists. It is also asking for details on the movement of any of those things, meaning where equipment, materials, or personnel are being moved. Tips can be sent through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, or through Tor, a browser that hides a user’s identity and location online. The State Department did not say what kind of information would earn the full $20 million.
The relocation piece matters for anyone inside Iran. Someone who leaks details about the country’s nuclear program would be putting their life at risk, and the offer signals the US is prepared to get informants and possibly their families out.
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The Rewards for Justice notice points to what the US says it no longer knows. According to the program, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, reported in 2025 that Iran was enriching uranium to 60 percent purity. Enrichment is the process of concentrating uranium so it can fuel a reactor or, at high enough levels, a bomb. Weapons grade uranium is about 90 percent, which puts 60 percent a short technical step away. The program also says Iran’s refusal to cooperate with inspectors has caused the agency to lose track of how many centrifuges Iran has and where they are. Centrifuges are the machines that do the enriching.
The offer lands in the middle of an active conflict. The US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28, months after joining strikes on Iran’s largest nuclear facilities in June 2025. Trump has repeatedly claimed those strikes obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. Now his own government is paying up to $20 million to find out what is left of it.
Trump has also kept a target in view. Earlier this week, he said the US still needed to “take care of, I would say, one or two sites, but we can do that in 10 minutes,” and named Pickaxe Mountain. The site sits near Iran’s heavily damaged Natanz enrichment facility and holds two deeply buried tunnel complexes. The US did not strike it during the June 2025 attacks or during the current war, and Tehran denies it is a nuclear facility. Trump has been threatening to hit it since at least July.
At the same time, Trump has claimed Iran wants to make a deal to end the war. Iran, for its part, said Friday that it shot down a US MQ1 drone over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf. Iran has long denied that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
The war has also played out at home. Rising oil and gas prices tied to the fighting became a major political problem for Trump and Republicans heading into Tuesday’s midterms, where Democrats flipped control of both the House and the Senate. Trump had said he expected the war to end after the elections.
