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

 

Undersecretary: JCPOA Is on Ice

by Jason Ditz 

Posted onMarch 1, 2023CategoriesNewsTagsIran

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.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/01/us-official-falsely-claims-iran-is-12-days-from-nuke-material-production/