(The Hill) – Iran’s nuclear breakout time has become a key question as President Trump considers whether to bomb the Islamic regime’s key underground nuclear facility.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in justifying his unprecedented strikes on the regional rival last week, said Iran was “marching very quickly” toward a nuclear weapon.
That seemed to diverge from U.S. assessments – voiced by National Security Director Tulsi Gabbard in a March congressional hearing – that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
Trump was clear about where he stood when asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Tuesday.
“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
Nuclear watchdogs have had limited ability to monitor Iran’s stockpiles since Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2018. For that reason and others, experts say pinning down a specific nuclear timeline is complicated.
“When people give different estimates of Iran’s breakout timeline, I think it’s because they’re talking about different things,” said Heather Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointing to Gabbard’s testimony and Trump’s pushback.
“Tulsi Gabbard said there is no evidence that Iran is weaponizing. That can be a true statement at the same time as Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability,” she said. “If you want to talk about actual weaponization, that is a very specific activity. It involves developing trigger technologies, figuring out how an implosion device works.”
Given its current level of enrichment, experts estimate it would take Iran a week or two to produce the weapons-grade uranium needed for a nuclear weapon, and another few months to build a crude weapon.
Then Iran would need to figure out how to deliver the bomb to Israel, more than 1,000 miles away, either fitting it onto a missile, dropping it from a plane, or smuggling it across the border by land.
According to CNN, U.S. officials think Iran is up to three years away from actually launching a nuclear weapon. Andreas Krieg, a lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, put that figure closer to 18 months. He said he was skeptical of Israel’s claims of a rapidly closing window to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“The assessment of what the Israeli intelligence says, we only have it filtered through the government, and the government obviously has an intention to say ‘they’re very close,’ and hence, this was a preemptive strike rather than an act of aggression,” Krieg said.
“I’m not sure whether the Israeli intelligence service really says this, or if this is the Israeli government abusing or exploiting a narrative,” he added. “No one has seen that report.”
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces did not respond to questions about their latest assessments.
Israel has pounded Iranian nuclear facilities in the past week, possibly setting back its nuclear program by a few months. However, experts say eliminating Iran’s near-term nuclear threat requires destroying the Fordo nuclear facility, which is buried in the side of a mountain.
Only the U.S. has the 30,000-pound bombs required to penetrate the thick concrete bunker shielding the nuclear centrifuges underground.
President Trump returned early from the G7 Summit in Canada and summoned his national security team to the White House on Tuesday as he considers sending U.S. bombers and pilots to join Israel’s war.
Latest assessments
A day before Israel’s strikes, a quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found that Iran had amassed 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, a stockpile that “remains a matter of serious concern,” said the agency, tasked with monitoring Tehran’s nuclear program.
The report was the first time since 2005 that the IAEA Board of Governors had found Iran in violation of its non-proliferation pledges.
“The first time in 20 years that you find someone to be in breach, it is a big deal and it should be very concerning,” said Williams.
90 percent enrichment is considered weapons-grade, and experts have said that Iran’s uranium supply is well above what would be needed for civilian use in a nuclear power plant.
The 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration included provisions for Iran to allow the IAEA significant access to its nuclear program, including installing cameras and sensors at nuclear sites.
After Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, the Iranian government has limited inspections and removed cameras at its sites altogether, though the IAEA has been able to retain some investigatory power and access.
Since at least 2019, the U.S. has assessed that Iran is not actively pursuing a workable nuclear device.
Annual reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence typically included the line “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”
Last year, American intelligence agencies shifted to say that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so,” but maintained that Iran did not have an active nuclear military program.
Before it launched its attacks last week, Israel told the United States that Iran had renewed research efforts useful for a nuclear weapon, including studying an explosive triggering system, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But U.S. officials weren’t convinced those efforts amounted to a decision by Iran to actually build a weapon.
Different perspectives
David Des Roches, a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies, said Israeli officials were inclined to be more cautious than their U.S. counterparts when assessing Iran’s nuclear threat.
“The Americans are more capable of looking at the capability and saying, ‘yes, yes, yes, but,’ and then examining intent. I think Israeli strategic culture is fundamentally different,” he said. “Their culture is preventing annihilation while the world stands by, so their calculus is less accepting of risk.”
Gabbard told lawmakers in March that the U.S. had seen a shift in Iranian rhetoric around nuclear weapons.
“In the past year, we’ve seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus,” she said.
But she noted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini had not re-authorized Iran’s nuclear weapons program suspended in 2003, and said the U.S. still believed Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Krieg argued that any decision made by Iran to begin sprinting towards a nuclear weapon would be known by Western intelligence agencies.
“Looking at how penetrated Iran is right now, we see that the Mossad [Israel’s spy agency] has been able to operate with impunity across all levels of the regime,” he said. “If any of these decisions had been made, it would have come to all our attention.”
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