In the unclassified version of a recent report to Congress, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” More importantly, observes Andrea Stricker, the report did not include a stipulation usually found in these reports that Iran isn’t working on “the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.” As Stricker explains, Iran is now very close to having enough highly enriched uranium to produce nuclear bombs and is trying to cross the next hurdle:
The remaining step for Iran, “weaponization,” involves complicated engineering and physics to create the nuclear weapon itself, marrying specialized triggering mechanisms, explosives, and components with fuel to trigger an atomic blast. . . . Due to Tehran’s past, known work on nuclear weapons, the United States and Israel estimate Iran’s weaponization timeline to be about a year, if not longer. Yet independent non-governmental experts such as [David] Albright believe the timeline may be less than six months. The obvious problem: no one knows for sure.
Surely, International Atomic Energy Agency requests for access and investigations are likely to succeed only if Tehran faces major economic and financial penalties for its lack of transparency and threatening nuclear advances—meaning the United States must enforce key oil sanctions that previously curtailed Iran’s revenue and brought its economy to the brink. The regime is currently exporting record quantities of oil to China and other countries because of a U.S. failure to enforce existing penalties.
To stop the regime from breaking out of its nonproliferation commitments at an opportune moment, the United States, alongside Israel, must also continue to prepare and showcase military options and signal a credible willingness to use force to destroy or substantially to set back Tehran’s program.
Read more on National Security Journal: https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/iran-the-next-nuclear-weapons-state/