Iran Is Shockingly Close to Nuclear Breakout Potential; The World Must Act

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: West Asia News Agency via REUTERS

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will soon issue new reporting on Iran’s nuclear program from a summer of inspections at Tehran’s nuclear sites.

The new data — and their implications — may cause a shock.

In June, Tehran installed numerous new uranium-enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment plant and its underground Fordow site, more than tripling the latter’s capacity to produce uranium enriched to 60 percent purity.

Amassing 60 percent enriched material puts Iran days from enriching that uranium to 90 percent, the level needed for atomic weapons. As a result, the Islamic Republic’s so-called “breakout time” — specifically, the amount of time the regime needs to produce weapons-grade uranium for multiple nuclear devices — may have dropped significantly.

The IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors will meet next during the week of September 9 in Vienna, where Washington and its European allies will consider Tehran’s nuclear advances, and assess Iran’s non-compliance with previous Board demands that the regime cooperate on a multi-year IAEA investigation into Tehran’s nuclear weapons-work.

To deter and penalize further Iranian advances, the West should pass an IAEA censure resolution against Tehran, and trigger the snapback of UN sanctions on the regime.

Iran’s breakout time began dropping precipitously after the election of US President Joe Biden in 2020, as Tehran exploited his desire to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and remove sanctions. Notably, this expansion came after Iran’s relative restraint when President Donald Trump exited the nuclear accord in 2018 and implemented massive US sanctions that severely crippled the Iranian economy.

As of November 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security, Iran needed 3.5 months to make weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear device, and around 5.5 months to produce enough material for two.

Biden later said he wouldn’t try to revive the joint nuclear deal, but stood by as Iranian breakout time dropped to terrifying levels.

IAEA data for May 2024 indicated the Islamic Republic could make enough fuel for one nuclear weapon in under 7 days, and enough for 13 weapons in four months. The regime would require an unknown number of additional months to build atomic devices and integrate the weapons-grade fuel, and the United States and Israel have reportedly observed Iranian scientists working on such efforts.

At Fordow last June, Iran installed advanced-generation machines known as the IR-6, which churn out uranium at a fast clip. There, Iran was already enriching uranium to 60 percent purity in two clusters of centrifuges — known as cascades — each containing 174 IR-6 machines, and informed the IAEA it was adding eight more cascades.

Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright crunched the numbers at Fordow, and found — using that facility alone — that Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for nine nuclear weapons in two months, adding to Iran’s overall breakout capability and rendering the plant an agile pathway for the Islamic Republic to quickly produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

Unless Iran has slowed centrifuge installation, Tehran could have nearly 1,400 IR-6 machines spinning at the highly fortified Fordow site, along with hundreds more new advanced machines at Natanz. A caveat: The United States may have offered the regime informal but lucrative sanctions relief to slow but not stop installation, meaning Iran could ramp back up any time.

These developments pair poorly with new US and Israeli intelligence that Iranian scientists at civilian research institutes were recently studying computer modeling and metallurgy related to nuclear weapons. As a result, the US intelligence community was unable to assert in a recent report to Congress that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons activities, prompting alarm from members of Congress who have seen the report’s classified version and received briefings.

Moreover, it is unclear whether the US and Israeli intelligence communities have adequate insight into Iran’s more covert nuclear weapons-work at military sites.

With the disarray of US election season and multiple world crises, Tehran’s temptation to sprint to nuclear weapons will only grow. Washington and its European allies must immediately counter and deter further Iranian advances.

As a follow-on to the IAEA board’s Iran censure last June — and in light of Tehran’s failure to comply with the board’s demands — the West must vote for a new censure at the IAEA’s upcoming meeting. Yet since Iran used the June board resolution as a pretext to expand its uranium-enrichment capacity immediately after, the West must do better at deterring further advances.

In the new IAEA resolution, Washington and its allies must refer Tehran’s proliferation case to the UN Security Council, where the United States, the United Kingdom, or France may — without Russia and China’s veto — reimpose within 30 days all Iranian sanctions that currently remain lifted by the defunct nuclear accord. Importantly, those sanctions prohibit Tehran’s uranium-enrichment activity and international (read: Russian and Chinese) missile and military trade with the regime. The West must also signal more sanctions pain is to come for additional Iranian advances.

Iran is rapidly approaching the capability to produce a medium-sized nuclear arsenal, and no nation but Israel is acting to stop it. Unless the Western powers plan to counter an expansionist, messianic Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons — one that is already acting on plans to destroy Israel by 2040 — they would do well to halt the regime’s advances while there is still time.

Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.