The new intelligence of the Iranian nuclear program has convinced US officials that the secret team of scientists in the country is exploring faster, if Cruder is an approach to the development of atomic weapons if the Tehran leadership decides to race for a bomb, according to current and former US officials.
Development comes even in the middle of a signal that the Iranian new president is actively seeking negotiations with Trump’s administration.
The intelligence was collected in the last months of the Biden administration, and then transmitted the President Trump’s national security team during the transition of government, according to officials, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The intelligence data assessment warned that Iranian weapons engineers and scientists are basically looking for a shortcut that would allow them to turn their growing nuclear fuel supplies into a feasible weapon in a few months and not a year or more – but only if Tehran made a decision to change their current approach.
US officials said that they still believed that Iran and his supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not make that decision to develop weapons, officials said in interviews in the last month. However, the new intelligence service suggests that, as Iranian intermediary forces recorded and his rockets failed to break through American and Israeli defense, the army seriously explored new opportunities to distract the American or Israeli attack.
Iran, officials said, remains on the nuclear threshold. In the years since Mr. Trump withdrew from the 2015 Nuclear Agreement, the country continued to produce Uranus and now has a lot of fuel to make four or more bombs. But this is not enough to create a weapon, and new evidence is focused on the last steps that Iran should turn fuel into one.
The evidence will almost certainly be part of the discussion on Tuesday between Mr. Trump’s Prime Minister and Israeli, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu is the first world leader to visit the White House two weeks ago from Mr. Trump’s inauguration. For years, the Israeli leader has gone to the edge of the order of Israeli military blow to the Iranian nuclear plants, only to withdraw, often under the pressure of his military and intelligence chiefs and the United States.
But the dynamics are now different, and maybe the budgets of Mr. Netanyahua are.
Iran has never been weaker than it is today, in terms of American and Israeli officials. Hamas and Hezbollah, which he funded and armed, lost their leadership and their ability to attack Israel. The Syrian leader, Bashar Al-Assad, fled to Moscow, and his country is no longer a light route for Iranian weapons.
In October, the Israeli counter on Iran removed the rocket defense around Tehran and some nuclear plants. Also hit giant mixing devices This is made up of fuel for new rockets, secreting Iranian production.
Mr. Trump indicated that he was not in a hurry to a direct conflict with Iran, and he seems to be open to negotiations. Asked immediately after the inauguration of whether he would support the Israeli strike on the facilities, he said: “I hope it will be able to worry without worrying about it. It would really be nice if it could be elaborated without having to go for a further step.” will, he added, hope that he will “make an agreement”.
Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who entered his duty in July after his predecessor died in a helicopter collision, repeatedly said he would also like to negotiate a new arrangement. But history suggests that he may not be aware of what the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is doing while preparing a nuclear option, former US officials and Iranian experts say.
“President Pezeshkian and Iranian Foreign Ministry probably have no knowledge of the internal nuclear discussions of the regime,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert in Iran in Carnegie for international peace.
“The Islamic Republic has long had two parallel regimes,” he said. “There is a deep state of military and intelligence forces, reported by Khamenei, who oversees the nuclear program and regional intermediaries and are in charge of repression, taking and assassination of hostages.”
Then, he said, there are diplomats and politicians “who are authorized to talk to Western media and officials who have little knowledge of these activities,” but are given the task of denying them.
US officials have long said that Iran left his weapon program in 2003, after an American invasion of Iraq. Iranian government officials have similarly insisted that the country implements civil nuclear technology.
Still, there are few doubts about long -term planning of Iranian weapons planning. Documens Israel stole Attacking on Warehouse in Tehran in 2018 described the technical efforts in detail.
If Tehran decides to change his policy and follow nuclear weapons, western officials have long estimated that Iran will only take days to enrich the uranium at a level of 90 percent, cleanliness was usually required to produce bomb. He has already made enough fuel, enriched to 60 percent to make four or five weapons.
But the enrichment of bomb uranium is not enough for Iran to produce nuclear weapons. And for years, US officials have said that it will take a year to 18 months for this to be highly enriching the uranus in a sophisticated battle head that is capable of being mounted on a ballistic rocket. Some Israeli estimates have been more than two years for more than two years.
The Iranians have known for years that this long development has been a great vulnerability. If the International Atomic Energy Agency, which still implements the limited inspections of the production of nuclear fuel, announced that Iran produces fuel bombing-based on 90 percent of the purity-erael and the United States in the past, they have warned that they will most likely force them to take military actions.
Thus, the Iranian best distraction would be to turn that fuel into working weapons. But it wouldn’t have much time.
US officials believe that Iran has the knowledge to make an older -style nuclear weapon, one that could be assembled far more faster than the more sophisticated designer of Tehran in the past. (He most likely received designs for such a weapon from AQ Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold the country designs for its nuclear centrifuge more than a quarter of a century ago.)
Such a weapon would not be able to be miniature to fit into a ballistic rocket. It would probably be far less reliable than any modern weapon design.
As a result, weapons would probably be an immediate offensive threat. But such a raw weapon is a type of device that Iran could quickly build, test and declare the world that it has become nuclear energy, US officials said.
Although it would be difficult to use such a weapon against Israel, it could have a distracting effect, making countries that consider the attack on Iran twice.
