Report Falsely Claims Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Nuke in a Month

Experts accuse Iran of trying to pressure Biden Administration

A new report from the Institute for Science and International Security is following up gloomy predictions of Iranian nuclear arms by saying, worst case, Iran would have enough weapons-grade uranium in a month.

Even conceding this as a “worst case” scenario, the report claims don’t appear to hold water, and seem in great measure to be an extension of a recent IAEA report, which was itself extremely misleading about Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium.

Iran has no weapons-grade uranium, and has never attempted to make it. The report bases the idea on Iran converting every single gram of uranium in their existing stockpile to weapons-grade. There is a big jump from having uranium enriched to 2-3 percent and weapons grade, which is above 90%.

The IAEA’s report on the 60% uranium seems a part of that, though, as they claimed the stockpiled “quadrupled” since May, which sounds bad until one realizes that Iran literally just started the process in late May.

The “worst case” was a combination of quadrupling, of the stockpile being 10 kg, and the hypothetical quadrupling on that to 40 kg would be enough for a weapon (albeit not weapons grade).

In reality, the 10 kg took the entire summer, and Iran has shown no interest in expanding that rate. There is no reason to think rapid expansion is going to happen.

Even if it did, turning weapons grade uranium, which Iran doesn’t have any way, into a weapon is no small task, adding many months onto the equation. On top of that too, this stockpile is based on one weapon, meaning a hypothetical test would destroy all the uranium and put them back at square one.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.