According to current and former U.S. officials, new information regarding Iran’s nuclear program has persuaded them that, should Tehran’s leadership decide to race for a bomb, a covert group of the nation’s scientists is investigating a quicker, albeit cruder, method of creating an atomic weapon.
The individuals, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the material was gathered in the latter months of the Biden administration and then passed along to President Trump’s national security staff during the handover of power. According to the intelligence assessment, Iranian scientists and weapons engineers were essentially searching for a short cut that would allow them to convert their expanding nuclear fuel stockpile into a functional weapon in a few months as opposed to a year.
In conversations conducted over the previous month, U.S. officials stated that they still maintain the belief that Iran and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have not decided to create a weapon. However, recent information indicates that the military is actively looking into new ways to prevent an attack by the United States or Israel, given that Iran’s proxy troops have been destroyed and its missiles have failed to breach American and Israeli defenses.
According to authorities, Iran is still on the verge of nuclear war. The nation has restarted uranium production in the years after Mr. Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement, and there is now enough fuel to produce four or more bombs. However, that is insufficient to truly create a weapon.
Mr. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime leader of Israel, will virtually surely discuss the evidence during their meeting on Tuesday. Since the inauguration of President Trump two weeks ago, Mr. Netanyahu is the first global leader to visit the White House. The Israeli leader has been on the verge of authorizing an Israeli military assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities for years, but he has backed off, frequently due to pressure from the US and his own military and intelligence leaders.
According to Israeli and American authorities, Iran has never been weaker than it is now. It has equipped and supported Hamas and Hezbollah, but they no longer have the leadership or the capacity to attack Israel. Bashar al-Assad, the leader of Syria, has escaped to Moscow.
The missile defenses surrounding Tehran and part of the nuclear facilities were destroyed in an Israeli counterattack on Iran in October. Additionally, it destroyed Iranian manufacturing by striking the massive mixing equipment that create fuel for new missiles.
Mr. Trump has stated that he is amenable to a negotiation and is not in a rush to engage in direct combat with Iran. “Hopefully that can be worked out without having to worry about it,” he said in response to a question about whether he would back an Israeli strike on the facilities shortly after the inauguration. If that could be resolved without taking that extra step, that would be very great. He also said that he hoped Iran would “make a deal.”
Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran, has stated time and time again that he would want to negotiate a new agreement. He took power in July after his predecessor was killed in a helicopter accident. According to Iran specialists and former U.S. officials, history indicates he might not be aware of what the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is developing as they get ready for the nuclear option.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, stated that it is unlikely that President Pezeshkian and the Iranian foreign ministry are aware of the regime’s internal nuclear discussions.
“There have been two parallel regimes in the Islamic Republic for a long time,” he stated. “Khamenei, who is in charge of the nuclear program, has been informed of a deep state of military and intelligence forces.”
Then, he claimed, there are politicians and diplomats “who have little if any knowledge of these activities and are authorized to speak to Western media and officials,” but they are tasked with denying them.
According to U.S. sources, Iran halted its weapons development in 2003 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In a similar vein, Iranian government representatives have maintained that the nation is working on civilian nuclear technology.
Nonetheless, Iran’s long-standing plans to develop a bomb are not in question. The technological attempts were detailed in documents that Israel took during a 2018 raid on a Tehran facility.
Western authorities have long estimated that Iran could enrich uranium to 90 percent purity, which is usually required to make a bomb, in a matter of days if Tehran were to shift its course and pursue a nuclear weapon. It has already produced four or five weapons’ worth of fuel, enriched at 60%.
However, Iran cannot manufacture a nuclear weapon by enriching uranium to bomb grade. For years, American authorities have stated that the process of converting that highly enriched uranium into a sophisticated warhead that can be installed on a ballistic missile would take between a year and 18 months. Even longer—up to two years—were some Israeli estimations.
