US failed to set back Iran’s nuclear program – Reuters

Tehran remains about a year from building a nuclear bomb if it wishes to do so, with its enriched uranium stockpile still out of reach, the news agency says

US-Israeli strikes on Iran have failed to push back the timeline for Tehran potentially acquiring a nuclear weapon, Reuters reported on Monday, citing intelligence sources. Tehran could still reportedly produce a bomb in roughly a year – the same estimate as after last June’s attacks on its key nuclear facilities.

While US officials have insisted that their key objective in the war has been to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, the timeline for a nuclear breakout remains “broadly unchanged,” the report says. It added that derailing Tehran’s nuclear effort would require destroying or removing Iran’s remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

“Iran still possesses all of its nuclear material, as far as we know,” Eric Brewer, a former senior US intelligence analyst, told Reuters. “That material is probably located in deeply buried underground sites where US munitions can’t penetrate.”

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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been unable to verify the whereabouts of some 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60% – enough, if further enriched, for ten bombs. About half is believed to be in an underground tunnel complex at the Isfahan Nuclear Research Center, according to Reuters.

Last June, powerful US strikes hit nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, with US intelligence estimating that the nuclear breakout timeline was put back to about nine months to a year, Reuters sources said. Around the same time, a New York Times report said, citing a classified assessment, that US strikes had set Iran’s program back by only “a few months.” 

US President Donald Trump at the time dismissed the allegation as “fake news,” saying that “monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran.”

Iran has consistently denied ever seeking nuclear weapons and rejected demands to surrender its enriched uranium stockpile. Last year, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stated that “we do not have any indication that there is a systemic program in Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”

Despite this, US and Israeli officials have for years sounded the alarm about Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been issuing warnings since at least 1992, and at the 2012 UN General Assembly, he famously brandished a cartoon bomb diagram with a red line drawn near the 90% enrichment threshold.