CIA Director William Burns said Monday that there’s no evidence Iran has decided to build nuclear weapons, comments that come amid calls in the US and Israel for strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
“No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program,” Burns told the Cipher Brief security conference, according to NBC News.
In 2003, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. His predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also rejected the idea of starting a WMD program while facing chemical attacks from a US-backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Burns said that if Iran did move to make a nuclear weapon, US intelligence would likely be aware of the decision. “I think we are reasonably confident that — working with our friends and allies — we will be able to see it relatively early on,” he said.
The CIA chief noted that Iran has increased uranium enrichment levels since the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, in 2018. Iran is enriching some uranium at 60%, which is still below the 90% needed for weapons-grade.
Iran increased uranium enrichment to 60% in 2021 following an Israeli sabotage attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, which was timed to sabotage indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
Burns claimed Iran would only need one week to “produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade material,” but the NBC report noted most experts say it would take at least one year to build an actual nuclear warhead.
