US officials say they don’t believe Iran is developing a nuclear weapon

The US conviction that Iran has suspended its plans to develop a nuclear bomb may explain the Biden Administration’s opposition to a potential Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Two U.S. officials told Reuters they don’t believe that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

A senior Biden administration official and a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) agreed with CIA Director William Burns’ remarks earlier in the week that the U.S. had no evidence that Iran was reversing its 2003 statement that it was abandoning its program to develop nuclear weapons.

“We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003,” said the ODNI spokesperson, referring to Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.S. conviction that Iran has suspended its plans to develop a nuclear bomb may explain the Biden Administration’s opposition to a potential Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Republican lawmakers, as well as former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump, have voiced strong criticism of the Biden Administration for discouraging Israel from making such a strike.

Trump mocked Biden for opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, saying: “That’s the thing you wanna hit, right?”

Tehran has denied ever having a nuclear program, contrary to Israeli and U.S. officials detecting suspicious activity from Iran as recently as the past few months.

Beth Sanner, a former U.S. deputy director of national intelligence, said that the risk is “higher now than it has been” that Iran may reverse its dictum in 2003 that it wasn’t developing a nuclear bomb.

However, she commented that an Israeli strike on Iranian facilities may encourage rather than discourage Iran from moving forward.

“They can’t get a weapon in a day. It will take months and months and months,” said Sanner, now a fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

However, a U.N. watchdog,  the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),  reported that at two facilities, Iran has been enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to 90% of weapons-grade.

The watchdog also reported that, in theory, it has enough material enriched to a level that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Iran’s ongoing enrichment of uranium has reduced the “breakout time” to make a bomb to a week or longer, down from a year in 2015.

In August, three independent sources in Iran told the London-based opposition media outlet that the regime is moving forward with its nuclear weapons program “by restructuring the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), retaining Mohammad Eslami as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and resuming tests to produce nuclear bomb detonators.”

The Biden administration privately warned Tehran in June about its research and development activities, Axios reported on July 17, citing three Israeli and U.S. officials.
According to the report, both Israeli and American officials have detected suspicious activities by Iranian scientists in recent months.

“Officials fear they could be part of a covert Iranian effort to use the period around the U.S. presidential election to make progress toward nuclear weaponization,” the article states.

American and Israeli officials met in Washington in mid-July, discussing “mutual coordination on a series of measures to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon,” the White House said.

Biden AdministrationIran nuclear dealiran nuclear program