Robert Peters and Nicole Robinson
Heritage Foundation, Oct. 1, 2024
“Given these reports and Secretary Blinken’s statement, we must assume that Tehran’s supply of highly enriched uranium could be converted to enough weapons-grade fuel to produce a handful of nuclear bombs in a matter of days.”
Introduction
Iran can produce nuclear weapons far more rapidly than expected. In late April 2024, a senior Iranian lawmaker stated that there is only a “one-week gap from the issuance of the order to the first test” of a nuclear bomb.
In July, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to corroborate this statement in part when he announced that “instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, [Iran] is now probably one or two weeks away.”
An August 2024 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report all but confirms these statements. As of August 17, Iran had 363.1 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60 percent—an increase of 49.8 pounds since the U.N. agency’s May 2024 report. Uranium that is “enriched up to 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.”… [To read the full article, click here]