The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) produced a confidential report that said Iran has now accumulated enough uranium at 60 percent purity to build three nuclear bombs if the relatively swift final steps are taken to reach weapons-grade 90 percent enrichment.
The IAEA report was leaked to Reuters on Friday by a group of seven current and former diplomats who felt not enough has been done to restrain Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the chances of the Biden administration resurrecting former President Barack Obama’s 2011 nuclear deal seem remote.
The final nails in the coffin of Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which former President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018 because his administration said the Iranians were cheating, appear to be the looming 2024 presidential election and the Israel-Hamas war.
The diplomats who leaked the IAEA assessment to Reuters said it was “simply not politically feasible” for President Joe Biden to offer Iran more concessions for a deal since Biden’s 2024 opponents are ready to pounce on him for appeasing the malevolent Iranian theocracy and Iran is sponsoring the terrorist groups that have attacked both Israel and American troops in the Middle East since October.
“The political debate is really not going to be about negotiating with Iran; it’s going to be about confronting Iran,” said former U.S. State Department Official Robert Einhorn.
The real problem lying beneath these political maneuvers is that Trump was right about the JCPOA — Iran was cheating on nuclear weapons and missile development, as demonstrated by its ability to swiftly produce a mountain of near-weapons-grade uranium. It was also using the financial windfall from sanctions relief to sponsor terrorists across the Middle East, including the savage butchers of Hamas.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted on Friday that Iran is “the only state without nuclear weapons to produce 60% enriched uranium.”
U.S. officials estimate Iran could refine enough uranium from 60 percent to weapons-grade to build a bomb in less than two weeks, and it would only take a few weeks longer to refine Iran’s half-ton stockpile of 20 percent uranium into bomb fuel.
The Biden administration stubbornly pretends not to understand that money is fungible, and freeing up, say, $6 billion to spend on “humanitarian goods” means Iran now has $6 billion to lavish upon Shiite militias and terrorist gangs. The ayatollahs, on the other hand, have spent fortunes building up groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, and the Iraqi militias, and they put a great deal of effort into planning how they will spend every fresh billion that falls into their hands.
Reuters noted the IAEA report contains further evidence that Tehran is “stonewalling” the monitoring agency while continuing to make “steady nuclear progress.” The Iranians largely weaseled out of a deal struck in March to reactivate IAEA monitoring equipment, and the agency remains “exasperated” that Iran kicked some of its most experienced investigators out of the country.
Four of the diplomats who spoke to Reuters said threats by Western nations to pass a “binding resolution” ordering Iran to comply with the IAEA have been abandoned because such action might be deemed “inflammatory” and provoke Tehran to begin refining its uranium stockpile to weapons grade.
Instead, the Western countries might put together a “firm” but “non-binding” resolution that would threaten some hypothetical “tougher action” at the next IAEA board meeting in March. The diplomats said there has also been talk about IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi pushing the Iranians harder to allow his top inspectors to resume their work.
A second confidential report recently distributed to IAEA member states said Iran is no closer to providing an explanation for why man-made uranium particles were found at two undeclared sites in Iran.
This second report quoted Iran’s nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, insisting that Tehran was “within its rights” to “de-designate” the top IAEA inspectors.
