Iran close to ‘nuclear breakout’ – Blinken

It would probably take Tehran “one or two weeks” to get the fissile material to build a weapon, the US Secretary of State has said

Iran could be in a position to build a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks or even days, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned. Tehran has been increasing its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium since Washington unilaterally pulled out from the landmark Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

In an apparent jab at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who spearheaded US withdrawal from the accord, Blinken told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday that Iran had dramatically reduced the time needed to produce the fissile material needed to make a nuclear bomb.

After “the nuclear agreement was thrown out, 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 from doing that,” the top US diplomat said.

Blinken stressed that Iran had not yet “produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully.”

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The secretary noted that Iran could show that it is serious about engaging with the US on nuclear issues by “pulling back on the work that it’s been doing” on its atomic program, adding that Washington continues to jack up sanctions pressure on Tehran in an effort to change their behavior.

According to a May report by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has more than 140 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%. To be used in a nuclear bomb, it must be enriched to more than 90%. By comparison, under the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with several world powers, including the US, Tehran pledged to keep its uranium enrichment at 3.67%.

Trump said he withdrew from the deal, which he called a “disaster,” because it failed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Tehran, however, has consistently maintained that it has no plans to do so and that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has been trying for months to revive the landmark deal, but the talks have stalled. In particular, Iran has demanded guarantees from the US that it will not walk away from the deal in the future.