Was Iran actually into nuclear weapon?

Kathmandu: Israel has fired dozens of targets across Iran. The strikes have damaged the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and assassinated top military personnel and nuclear scientists in Tehran.

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, after the first wave of attacks on Thursday night, condemned what he called Israel’s “reckless” attacks on his country’s “peaceful nuclear facilities”. Iran has since launched counter-air strikes on Israel.

The BBC cited Araghchi as saying the global nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was monitoring Natanz and that the attacks on the facility risked a “radiological disaster”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the operation was necessary to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival”. PM Netanyahu said Israel had acted because “if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time”.

He warned that it could be a year, or it could be within a few months. Although there is neither confirmation nor denial, Israel seems to have nuclear weapons.

The Israeli military said it had accumulated intelligence showing that “concrete progress” had been made in the Iranian regime’s efforts to produce weapons components adapted for a nuclear bomb, including a uranium metal core and a neutron source initiator for triggering the nuclear explosion.

Director for non-proliferation policy at the US-based Arms Control Association, Kelsey Davenport, said Israel’s prime minister “did not present any clear or compelling evidence that Iran was on the brink of weaponizing”.

Referring to the time it would take Iran to acquire enough fissile material for one bomb if it chose to do so, Director Davenport said, ‘Iran has been at a near-zero breakout for months.’ She said the assessment that Iran could develop a crude nuclear weapon within a few months is not new.

The director said some of Iran’s nuclear activities would apply to developing a bomb, but US intelligence agencies had examined that Iran was not engaged in key weaponization work.

This March, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, told Congress said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was “at its highest levels” and “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons”.

But Director Gabbard said the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003”.

Last week, in its latest quarterly report, the IAEA said that Iran had amassed enough uranium enriched up to 60% purity – a short, technical step away from weapons grade, or 90% – to potentially make nine nuclear bombs. That was “a matter of serious concern”, given the proliferation risks, it added.

The agency also said it could not assure that the Iranian nuclear programme was exclusively peaceful because Iran was not complying with its investigation into man-made uranium particles discovered by inspectors at three undeclared nuclear sites.

Iran has always claimed that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and it has never sought to develop a nuclear weapon.

However, when projects under what was known as “Project Amad” were stopped, the IAEA’s decade-long investigation found evidence that Iran conducted “a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” from the late 1980s until 2003.

The agency concluded that Iran continued with some activities until 2009, when Western powers revealed the construction of the Fordo underground enrichment facility, but after that, there were “no credible indications” of weapons development.

In 2015, Iran agreed a deal with six world powers under which it accepted restrictions on its nuclear activities and allowed rigorous monitoring by the IAEA’s inspectors in return for relief from crippling sanctions.

The limits covered Iran’s production of enriched uranium, which is used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.

But referring to the deal’s low contribution to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions, US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal during his first term in 2018.

Iran retaliated against the deal by increasingly breaching the restrictions, particularly those relating to enrichment. No enrichment was permitted at Fordo for 15 years as per the nuclear deal. However, Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20% purity in 2021.

On Thursday, the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors formally announced Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

Iran said it would respond to the resolution by setting up a new uranium enrichment facility at a “secure location” and by replacing first-generation centrifuges used to enrich uranium with more advanced, sixth-generation machines at the Fordo enrichment plant.

Israeli strikes in Tehran on Thursday night targeted nuclear scientists and military commanders.

The Israeli military said on Friday that its first round of air strikes damaged the underground centrifuge hall at Natanz, as well as critical infrastructure that enabled the site to operate.

Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s director general, told the UN Security Council that the above-ground pilot fuel enrichment plant (PFEP) and electricity infrastructure at Natanz were destroyed. He said there was no indication of a physical attack on the underground hall, but the loss of power may have damaged the centrifuges there.

The US-based Institute for Science and International Security said the destruction of the PFEP was significant because the facility had been used to produce 60%-enriched uranium and also to develop advanced centrifuges.

Director Davenport also said the strikes on Natanz would increase Iran’s “breakout time”, but that it was too soon to assess the full impact.

Later on Friday, Iran said the IAEA that Israel had struck the Fordo enrichment plant and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre.

The Israeli military said a strike in Isfahan had “dismantled a facility for producing metallic uranium, infrastructure for reconverting enriched uranium, laboratories, and additional infrastructure”.

Israel’s prime minister also said the operation would continue for “as many days as it takes to remove this threat”.

According to Director Davenport, that is an unrealistic goal. She said strikes can destroy facilities and target scientists, but cannot erase Iran’s nuclear knowledge and Iran can rebuild, and more quickly now than in the past due to its advances in uranium enrichment.

Nepali version of the news story