America’s top diplomat warns about Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on July 19 that the time needed for Iran to produce enough material for a nuclear weapon is now 1-2 weeks.
This is considered the shortest period of time that the US has ever estimated regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons production capacity in the context of Tehran in recent months accelerating its nuclear program.
“The situation is not good. Because the nuclear deal is no longer in effect, the time it would take Iran to have enough material to make a nuclear weapon has gone from at least a year to just a week or two. They haven’t made a weapon themselves, but that’s certainly something we’re watching very carefully,” Mr. Blinken said.
Mr. Blinken said that US policy is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and the administration wants to prevent that through diplomatic means.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has spent nearly a year indirectly negotiating with Iran to restore the Iran nuclear deal, which Washington withdrew from in 2018 under the administration of Donald Trump.
Those efforts collapsed in late 2022, when the US accused Iran of making “unreasonable” demands related to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation into unexplained traces of uranium found at several Tehran facilities.
Iran’s newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian has suggested Tehran is open to working with the West. However, a senior State Department official told CNN they no longer believe the nuclear deal can be returned because Iran has taken too many escalatory actions in the years since the talks collapsed.
Iran has always maintained that its nuclear program is “for peaceful purposes only.” Since 2022, Iran has claimed that it has the technology to build a nuclear bomb but has no plans to do so.
In late April, Javad Karimi-Ghodousi, a member of Iran’s national security committee, said that his country could technically enrich uranium to 90% purity “for warheads” in “half a day to a maximum of a week.”
In May, Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that the country could change its nuclear doctrine and start building atomic bombs in the near future if Israel threatens Tehran’s survival.
