Iran is just one or two weeks away from being able to produce enough weapons-grade nuclear material to build a bomb, according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
It's the shortest breakout time ever referenced by a U.S. official. No doubt the state of Israel has its own breakout measurement, given that they're in Iran's bullseye.
“Where we are now is not in a good place,” the secretary said at the Aspen Security Forum Friday.
“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,” he said.
It's impossible to measure how much more quickly, if at all, Iran could achieve a nuclear breakout if the nuclear deal were still in place. Claiming that the time period telescoped from a year to a couple of weeks is a political observation not based on measurable data.
Blinken might have mentioned that the biggest contributor to the shortened breakout time is Iran's development of far more efficient centrifuges, which is something they would have been able to do with or without the agreement thanks to Obama's eagerness to do any deal at all.
“They haven’t produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully,” Blinken added.
We don't have a clue. Cameras and other surveillance equipment have been taken down by Iran, which is also refusing to hand over photos and data gathered before it decided to violate other nuclear agreements.
The Biden administration engaged in more than a year of indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in 2018 under the Trump administration.
Those efforts collapsed in late 2022, as the US accused Iran of making “unreasonable” demands related to a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN nuclear watchdog, into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites. In the months that followed, the administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was “not on the agenda.”
“When this administration came in, we tried to pursue again, nuclear diplomacy with Iran, because if you could at least take one problem off the board, which is Iran potentially with a nuclear weapon, that’s inherently a good thing,” he said.
The story of U.S. negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program is one of humiliation with Iranian negotiators screaming at Kerry about U.S. policies in the past and present.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was said to “frequently shout at Western diplomats with such force that bodyguards have been forced to enter the negotiation room," according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Former Reagan, Bush, and Trump advisor Elliot Abrams could hardly believe that when he read it.
As someone who worked for Secretary of State George Shultz, and for Condoleezza Rice (at the National Security Council), I am absolutely sure that neither of them would have put up with this for a split second. They would have told the Iranian to pipe down, and if he did not they’d have left the room. It undermines the dignity of the individual American negotiator, and of the position of Secretary of State, and of our country when such conduct is regularly aimed at us--and we do nothing. It suggests to the Iranians not only that the individual negotiator will countenance such misconduct, but that in the substance of the negotiations our country will as well-- allowing cheating, for example, because we lack the backbone to call it by its proper name.
Kerry and Blinken both believe that Iranians have a right to scream at Americans because of our past policies toward Iran. And Abrams is absolutely spot on. Iran knew they could cheat (which they did) without much barking back from the U.S.
Even with the nuclear deal in place, Iran proved that it could continue its steady march toward the construction of a nuclear weapon. Blinken claiming the nuclear deal restrained Iran's drive for a bomb is the kind of wishful thinking that allowed Iran to get as close to constructing a nuclear bomb as ever before.
