The U.S. assessment of Iran’s nuclear program has not changed since March, when the director of national intelligence told lawmakers that Tehran has large amounts of enriched uranium but has not made a decision to rush toward building an atomic bomb, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a source with knowledge of the matter.
Comments by President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have painted a different picture, suggesting that Iran is racing toward creating a nuclear weapon.
Trump said Wednesday that Iran was “a few weeks” from having a nuclear weapon, and Netanyahu said in a recent interview that Iran was pursuing a “secret plan” to build a bomb within months.
“The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear that they were working on a secret plan to weaponize the uranium,” Netanyahu recently told Fox News. “They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months and certainly less than a year.”
U.S. intelligence reporting on Israel is typically based in part on information provided by Israel’s intelligence services. It was unclear whether Netanyahu’s remarks were based on a different interpretation of the same intelligence.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, told reporters he was perplexed by Trump’s assertions as lawmakers have received a different picture from U.S. intelligence officials.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, told lawmakers in March that U.S. spy agencies assessed that Iran had not made a decision to build nuclear weapons but that it had stockpiles of enriched uranium far beyond what is required for civilian purposes. The U.S. intelligence community’s view has not changed since her testimony, the source with knowledge of the matter said.
Warner said Wednesday that he received further confirmation of the March intelligence assessment “this week.”
On Tuesday, Trump publicly dismissed Gabbard’s testimony, saying, “I don’t care what she said.”
Warner said the administration needed to clarify whether there was new intelligence on Iran’s nuclear work.
“So far, at least, the intelligence community has stood by its conclusion that Iran is not moving towards a nuclear weapon. They were enriching additional uranium, but they were not weaponizing that yet, and that [decision] was left with the supreme leader,” he said.
“If there has been a change in that intelligence, I need to know, and I want to make sure that if it is changed, it’s based upon fact and not political influence,” he said.
Building the bomb
For Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal, it would need to enrich uranium to 90% purity. At the moment, it has a significant amount of uranium enriched to 60%, about 400 kilograms’ worth, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
It would take a small technical step to enrich to 90%. Iran has enough uranium now to produce up to 10 weapons over several weeks, according to U.S. officials’ estimates.
But enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels is only the first step. Then Iran would have to build and test a device that could be delivered in the form of a bomb or a missile. Estimates vary, but Western officials and analysts say it could take months to more than a year to build a nuclear weapon.
Weapons experts say that Iran is not weeks away from securing a nuclear weapon but that it is weeks away from securing enough fissile material for an eventual weapon.
The director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, said in a report this month that “Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent.”
But on Tuesday, Grossi told CNN said that U.N. inspectors did not have proof that Iran was engaged in “a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.”
Israel’s airstrikes on Iran have probably set the country’s nuclear program back by a few months, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
Since it launched its campaign against Iran last week, Israel has bombed centrifuge plants used to enrich uranium, including a site at Natanz, south of Tehran, and labs used to convert uranium gas into a metal, according to the IAEA and Israeli officials.
Israel says it has killed several nuclear scientists and targeted missile launch and storage sites in its air raids.
