US Official Falsely Claims Iran Is 12 Days From Nuke Material Production

Undersecretary: JCPOA Is on Ice

Speaking to the US House Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl falsely testified that Iran could make enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in “about 12 days.”

Kahl claims that Iran’s enrichment capacity has increased sufficiently over the course of the past five years — since the US abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran nuclear deal” — to reduce that timeline from more like a year, and regrets that the JCPOA is “on ice.”

Other officials concede that Iran is not stockpiling any uranium enriched beyond 60%, well short of weapons grade, and also doubt Iran’s other technical capacities to build nuclear weapons.

Getting a bomb’s worth of 90% uranium is no small task, even before trying to make it into a deliverable weapon. Iran’s weapons development capabilities would be in doubt even if they were stockpiling uranium, which again they aren’t.

Pentagon officials still maintain that getting back into a deal with Iran is preferable to not having one.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is senior editor of Antiwar.com.