The report notes that Tehran has enriched enough uranium to 60 percent purity for at least three bombs and has ‘cemented its role as a threshold nuclear state’
Iran’s leadership is conducting a “strategic debate” over whether the time has come for it to start making nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing four Iranian officials, including diplomats and members of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Pointing out that three senior officials close to Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei have publicly declared in recent weeks that Iran’s ostensible no-nuclear-weapons doctrine is reversible if the country deems itself to be facing an existential threat, the Times reported that Iran’s “power circles” are discussing whether it is “time to weaponize the nuclear program and build a bomb.”
It noted that Iran has enriched enough uranium to 60 percent purity for at least three bombs. It has also installed 1,400 “next-generation centrifuges” at its Fordow enrichment facility in recent weeks, and would thus be able to double that inventory in weeks or months should it so choose. (Uranium enriched to 60% can be converted to bomb-grade fuel in days or weeks, the report stated.)
The Fordow facility is buried so deep, the report added, quoting military officials, that it would require “repeated, precise strikes by the United States’ largest “bunker buster” to reach down that deep.
Citing interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials, and with outside experts, the Times assessed that Iran has now “cemented its role as a ‘threshold’ nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it.”
While US officials told the paper there is no evidence of a current Iranian effort to weaponize the uranium, “Israelis argue that such efforts are indeed underway, under the guise of university research.”
The Times tied Iran’s recent “nuclear expansion” to its unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel in April, and said some of Iran’s leaders believe that attack, which was almost entirely thwarted by Israel and US-led allies, underlined “the need for a far more powerful deterrent.”
“Even though it would still take more than a year to actually produce a weapon,” the Times said, “the question is whether American or Israeli spy agencies would detect the move and be able to stop it.”
If Iran had been enriching uranium at current levels a few years ago, when the region was not as tense as it is today, “Israel would almost certainly be considering military options to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the paper further said, citing a European diplomat involved in discussions with Iran.
On Tuesday, at a meeting at the Pentagon with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in public comments in English, said that “time is running out” in the fight to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and stressed that Israel and the US must work together to prevent the threat from being actualized.
“The greatest threat to the future of the world and the future of our region is Iran,” Gallant said. “Now is the time to realize the commitment of the American administrations over the years to promise to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.”
According to an Axios report yesterday, citing three Israeli officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reestablished a series of working groups two weeks ago to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, amid concern that the Islamic Republic could aim to move toward the bomb as early as January.
The renewed attention to Iran’s nuclear program came after new intelligence indicated that Iran could be looking to “shorten the timetable” for going nuclear, according to Yaakov Nagel, a former national security adviser who remains close to the prime minister.
The Iranian research is taking place “under an academic umbrella,” Nagel said, and is believed to be without official approval from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Intelligence officials in the US and Israel believe that Khamenei knows of the activity but is seeking to preserve a measure of deniability, he said.
