David Axe

Security, Middle East

Iran is taking steps to shorten the time it would take to produce a nuclear warhead.

Note to Trump: Iran Would Need 1 Year to Build a Nuclear Weapon

Iran is taking steps to shorten the time it would take to produce a nuclear warhead.

The commission overseeing the 2015 deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program is “treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves,” said Jackie Wolcott, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran’s effort to shorten the time to produce a nuke “does not pose an immediate risk,” wrote Kelsey Davenport, an expert with the Arms Control Association in the United States.

“Currently, due to restrictions put in place by the nuclear deal, the United States estimates that timeline at 12 months,” Davenport explained in a July 2019 assessment.

But the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, a signature accomplishment of former U.S. president Barack Obama, is in danger of collapsing following current president Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the deal’s oversight.

Trump shortly thereafter reinstated economic sanctions targeting Iran that the Obama administration had lifted as an incentive for Iran to agree to limits on its nuclear program.

Trump’s sanctions made it more likely Iran would abandon diplomacy and develop an atomic bomb. Trump is not “deserving to exchange messages with,” Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated in June 2019.

Trump abandoned the Iran deal to spite Obama, according to a leaked memo written by the United Kingdom's former ambassador to the United States. Kim Darroch in 2018 described Trump’s move as an act of "diplomatic vandalism.”

Read the full article.