Iran just days away from making enough fissile material for nuclear bomb, warns Blinken

Biden’s Secretary of State blames Donald Trump and America’s departure from the Iran nuclear deal for Tehran’s progress towards an atomic weapon.

By World Israel News Staff

Iran’s nuclear program has progressed significantly over the past six years, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday, warning that Tehran could be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in as little as a week or two.

Blinken addressed the Aspen Security Forum Friday, discussing, among other things, the prospects for restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following the election of Masoud Pezeshkian earlier this month.

Pezeshkian, a reformist who has been widely portrayed as a moderate, will replace acting president Mohammad Mokhber on July 30th.

“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,” Blinken said.

“What we need to see, if Iran is serious about engaging, is actually pulling back on the work that it’s been doing on his program.”

Without an agreement in place with Iran, Blinken lamented, Tehran could soon produce its first atomic weapon.

Blinken rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, in which Trump boasted that America’s departure from the nuclear deal in 2018 and the subsequent restoration of sanctions on Iran left the Islamic republic “broke” and unable to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

The Secretary of State pushed back on Trump’s claims that the Biden administration was to blame for Iran being “very close to having a nuclear weapon.”

“Instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, it is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” Blinken continued.