The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued its quarterly report on Iran’s civilian nuclear program, and like clockwork media outlets responded with hysterical speculation about Iranian nuclear weapons despite this report being not materially dissimilar from recent quarterly reports.
The last report in November was that Iran had 182.3 kg of 60% enriched uranium, while the new report puts that stockpile at 274.8 kg. That the number grew is unsurprising, both because Iran isn’t using the 60% enriched uranium for anything and because Iran added to its number of centrifuges enriching uranium in November after the US and UK voted for the IAEA to condemn Iran.
The initial JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran was meant to prevent these stockpiles growing by having Iran export the enriched uranium for further processing into fuel for civilian reactors. The US withdrew from the JCPOA during President Trump’s first term, and the reprocessing hasn’t been happening since then.
60% enriched uranium is still well short of weapons grade uranium, considered to be 90%-95%. Though media outlets are emphasizing that further enrichment is a “technical” matter, it should be noted that not only has Iran never attempted to enrich any higher than 60%, but promised back in November that it will keep enrichment entirely at 60% or below.
Iran has been enriching at the 60% level since April 2021, and it has consistently been part of hawkish narratives to call for attacking Iran for its enrichment capabilities since then. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for attacks on Iran over its nuclear program since his first term in office in the 1990s though, so if the 60% stockpile pretext wasn’t there, it would likely be something else.
More relevant to the fear about Iran is that in January the CIA noted that there is no evidence Iran has decided to even attempt to build a nuclear weapon. Moreover, just a few weeks ago President Trump dismissed the idea of attacking Iran, saying he doesn’t believe that Iran wants a nuclear weapon. The vast majority of media coverage of the new IAEA report doesn’t mention any of this, and just speculates about what Iran might conceivably do.
Predictably, Fox News went even further than other media outlets on this, quoting an Iranian general calling for “Operation True Promise 3” that would raze Tel Aviv to the ground, intending to imply this was a threatened nuclear attack on Israel.
In reality, Operation True Promise 2 was the name given to the October conventional missile attack on Israel in retaliation to previous Israeli attacks, causing minor damage. There is no indication these new comments were anything but a threat for further conventional missile strikes.
Since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a religious fatwa in 2003 forbidding the production of nuclear weapons, it would be unthinkable for an Iranian official to threaten an attack using a weapon they don’t have and by all indications aren’t even attempting to acquire.
