In a recent report, the IAEA claims Iran is in a race against time to increase uranium enrichment. The Natanz facility uses sophisticated centrifuges, which has been and continues to be an insurmountable puzzle for the IAEA in monitoring Iran's nuclear program.
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This dangerous report has several subtexts and dimensions that cannot be ignored. First and foremost is the intentions of the Iranian regime and the degree of its sincerity and seriousness in the negotiations, which lost a lot of time and provided the regime with a "time limit" that allowed it to make further progress on the enrichment rate, on the one hand, and to use these developments to pressure Western negotiators and gain further advantages, on the other.
This is not an analysis. But it is what the IAEA report says, which notes that Iran used the period of stalled negotiations to import more advanced uranium enrichment equipment, the use of which the nuclear agreement prohibits.
What is happening now is that the talks have stalled; they are being postponed, at least until after the midterm congressional elections and the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Iran has had more time and will continue to make progress, increasing the enrichment rate and getting closer to the 90 percent needed for nuclear weapons and accumulating more and more enriched uranium in secret facilities.
This is a far cry from Israeli intelligence estimates, which can be largely trusted. I won't repeat them here lest someone say this is part of "Israeli propaganda" or whatever, but there are several official US statements confirming that Iran is just weeks away from getting a nuclear weapon. This is the text of statements made by Robert Malley, the US special envoy to Iran, in mid-August.
This, by the way, is a professional diplomat who is often accused of being flexible and condescending to the Iranians. In it, he stressed that Tehran was only a few weeks away from having enough material to build a nuclear bomb and expressed the hope that an agreement could be reached as soon as possible.
Prior to this dangerous statement, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had said in April that Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear weapon had shrunk from a year to weeks or less. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also confirmed this at a hearing in the US House of Representatives that same month.
He also pointed out that the time it takes Iran to acquire the materials to build a nuclear arsenal has "shrunk to a matter of weeks." One could say that these assessments have been circulating for years; much of it aimed at increasing pressure on Iran and mobilizing the international community against it to force it to make concessions.
The question of objectivity of research probably implies some degree of truth. But it by no means encompasses all truths, and I personally believe that it is analytically in the anti-Iranian direction and not in their interest to make these assessments outdated and repeat them many years ago.
If only 25% of these assessments are based on our facts, then we have been dealing with the real nuclear reality for a long time and we are not waiting for new expectations. I think Iran is very capable of having the nuclear capability to build a "bomb;" it comes down to a political decision now, nothing more, nothing less, if it doesn't already have it.
My evidence for that is the progress that has been made in Iran's weapons sector in recent years, particularly in cruise missiles and what the Iranian regime calls "missile cities," although my point here is not about that development per se, but about its implications and consequences. This reflects a growing desire to accelerate the development of Iran's weapons capabilities.
When it comes to development in specific military areas, the nuclear sector, where Tehran has already accumulated a great deal of expertise, will be the immediate arena for managing the pace of development.
There are other strategic levers that could accelerate the pace of nuclear progress. Chief among these, of course, are the variables associated with the Ukraine crisis and the fact that the idea of an Iranian attack on the US has reached an impasse, as well as the difficulty of rationalizing the idea of freezing uranium enrichment capabilities to the officially announced level, 70% especially among the Iranian leadership, accustomed to maneuvering, prevarication, and lying, among other things.
All this is a kind of "political piety," one of the main philosophical pillars on which the theory of "guardians of the law" rests.
The question arises as to how the current Iranian popular protests are related to the issue of acquiring nuclear weapons, especially the IAEA report that says Tehran wants to make more progress than previously planned after installing a new set of advanced centrifuges and has already started work. This is extremely dangerous.
The protests are likely to further strengthen the Iranian regime's resolve to close the gap with nuclear weapons if it does not in fact possess them. For Tehran is very angry, claiming that the West is fomenting the protests.
It is trying to stop pressure on the regime and get the major powers to consider the consequences of possessing nuclear weapons as part of Iran's internal stability calculus, as in the case of Pakistan.
The troubling thing about these developments is that some in our region are downplaying the seriousness of Iran's nuclear weapons, arguing that the crisis in Ukraine proved to be a defensive deterrent. Conceptually, that is correct. But it does not negate the danger posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of a regime pursuing an expansionist project, as in the case of Iran.
It is difficult to stop the momentum of this regime and prevent it from expanding and deploying armed formations because it has weapons that some would call defensive.
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