Netanyahu re-establishes working groups on Iran nuclear program

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago re-established working groups made up of members of Israel’s defense establishment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the intelligence community to focus on Iran’s nuclear program, three senior Israeli officials told Axios’ Barak Ravid on Wednesday.

Israel and the US are concerned Iran will try to advance its nuclear technology, including weaponization efforts, in the weeks leading to the US presidential elections, according to two Israeli and two US officials.

Israeli and US officials said US leaders’ attention might be divided between the campaign and the continued crisis in Gaza, and the US could struggle to respond quickly to any Iranian nuclear advances during this period.

The officials also said there is concern Iranian leaders might try to use the post-election transition period in the US to “break” towards a nuclear weapon.

One U.S. official said the US intelligence community still thinks Iran is not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon but it has taken provocative nuclear steps “that will not go unchallenged.”

Senior Israeli officials told Axios that Netanyahu’s directive to national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi to re-establish the teams came after a period of about a year and a half during which the working groups were frozen.

News of the working groups being re-established follows recent concerning reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear program.

The IAEA’s most recent report determined that Iran has started up new cascades of advanced centrifuges and plans to install others in the coming weeks after facing criticism over its nuclear program.

That report came a day after the IAEA said that Iran has rapidly installed extra uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site.

The IAEA released a report at the end of May which found that Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Previously, the IAEA found that, between June and November last year, Iran slowed down the enrichment to 3 kg per month, but that jumped back up to a rate of 9 kg at the end of the year.

The increase came soon after Tehran barred a third of the IAEA’s core inspections team, including the most experienced, from taking part in agreed monitoring of the enrichment process.

That move was part of Iran’s scaling back of its compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with world powers, in response to then-US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018.