Iran close to making nuclear weapon, Blinken warns

File photo : the United Nation’s atomic watchdog confirmed in 2021 that Iran continues to produce uranium metal, which can be used in the production of a nuclear bomb in a move that further complicates the possibility of reviving a landmark 2015 deal with world powers on the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran is probably capable of producing enough fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within “one or two weeks,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday.

“They haven’t produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully,” Blinken said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Tehran had committed to restricting its nuclear programme in a landmark treaty in 2015, but former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, imposing harsh economic sanctions.

In return, Iran resumed uranium enrichment and restricted inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Iran, because 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, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” Blinken said.

“One of the biggest mistakes that we’ve made in recent years, was throwing out that agreement and allowing Iran to get out of the box that we put it in,” the secretary of state added.

Earlier this month, Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian repeated Teheran’s insistence that his country was not building nuclear weapons.

Writing in the Tehran Times, Pezeshkian stressed that “Iran’s defence doctrine does not include nuclear weapons,” adding that the United States should lift harmful economic sanctions.

Fizzle materials

Fissile materials are materials that can undergo the fission reaction. They are the key component of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. Those mostly used in nuclear weapons are highly enriched uranium (U-235 isotope of uranium) and plutonium (Pu-239 isotope of plutonium).

A non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices would strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime and might represent a practical contribution to the nuclear disarmament efforts according to the UN

Yahoo