Index – Abroad – Iran within arm’s reach of the nuclear bomb – only a matter of political will

Nuclear weapons were once described as un-Islamic by Iran’s supreme leader and in a fatwa, banned its production with his own religious decision. Since the nineties, many changes have taken place in the country, which is still headed by the 84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nuclear weapons are no longer taboo.

Tehran continues to insist that its nuclear program is not for armaments, but only for civilian purposes.

Iran “is not currently engaged in key developmental activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear weapon,” London’s Telegraph quoted the latest US intelligence assessment as saying.

However, uranium enrichment continues in an underground facility near the village of Fordo, which consists of barely a hundred houses. According to experts, the quality of enriched uranium barely reaches the level necessary for an atomic bomb.

In the past five years, Iran has increased the amount of enriched uranium from barely one to five and a half tons, UN inspectors noted in their February report.

“Iran has reached the threshold of nuclear weapons. It would be able to finish the bomb faster than at any other time in its history,” confirmed the assessment of the director of a civilian arms control organization.

If the political decision is made in Tehran, in just a week they can produce weapons-grade uranium in a quantity sufficient to produce five or six nuclear bombs in a month

Kelsey Davenport warned.

The construction of the atomic bomb itself is much more lengthy and takes more than a year and a half, but the process takes place in secret, hidden locations, which makes detection difficult and hinders the work, the expert added.

The collapsed nuclear deal

Put simply, the agreement signed in 2015 by the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, China and Russia in addition to Iran is called the nuclear deal, on the basis of which Western sanctions were lifted, and in exchange Tehran allowed the presence of international observers in its nuclear facilities.

Donald Trump, who was running to replace Barack Obama in the White House at the time, branded the deal as the “worst deal ever.” After his victory, despite the pleas of his Western allies, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA agreement in 2018 and reinstated sanctions against Tehran.

Since Washington’s withdrawal, Tehran has asserted its right to suspend certain parts of the agreement. However, it has restrained itself and the amount of enriched uranium is still well below 2015 levels.

At the same time, UN inspectors have been unable to enter key facilities of Iran’s nuclear program for three years. The day after the attack on Israel, international inspectors were permanently banned from Iran, citing possible retaliation.

However, the bottom line is that since the withdrawal of the USA, under limited international supervision, Iran’s nuclear program has developed rapidly – warned Julien Barnes-Dacey, a member of the European Council’s Foreign Relations Council.

Iran was not interested in escalation

Tehran expects to gain more from easing sanctions than from building a nuclear bomb. However, this did not dampen his hatred of Israel – that is why he supported the strengthening of the militants of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Escalation of clashes also poses a serious risk to the Iranian regime. Analysts use this to explain that the rocket and drone attack launched against Israel was more spectacular than devastating.

However, Tehran “will pay a high price for developing nuclear weapons, so it will not take the decision lightly,” Kelsey Davenport says.

The Iranian president also seems to confirm this. After the attack on Israel, Ebrahim Raiszi spoke to the Russian president on the phone and said that his strikes were limited, and that the Islamic Republic was not interested in the escalation of the armed conflict.

(Cover photo: Unidentified men carry a mockup of Iran’s first hypersonic missile, the Fattah, outside a mosque during a rally to celebrate the IRGC’s UAV and missile attack in Tehran, Iran on April 15, 2024. Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Images)