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The Biden administration has this week confirmed that Iran is only weeks away from achieving nuclear breakout capability, as it reportedly prepares to acknowledge that its efforts to renew the collapsed JCPOA nuclear deal have failed. These developments come alongside the former Deputy Chairman of the Iranian Parliament Ali Motahari stating that it has always been Iran’s intention to build a nuclear weapon, despite the Iranian government’s claims to the contrary.
According to reports, the U.S administration is closer than ever to admitting that President Biden’s goal of returning Iran to the 2015 nuclear deal has been a failure. An official told Israel Hayom: “The possibility that the parties will sign an agreement in the foreseeable future is dwindling at an exponential rate”. Another source stated that the Biden administration has begun discussing a scenario in which the deal won’t be revived.
The U.S on Tuesday said that Iran’s nuclear breakout was down to a matter of weeks, blaming the previous Trump administration, as negotiations between Iran and world powers continued to stall. The breakout period refers to how long it will take for Iran to collect enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, if it chooses to do so.
The negotiations with Iran, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, have stalled for so long reportedly due to Iran’s demand that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from the U.S. terror list. According to a senior Israeli diplomatic official, Biden had notified European allies that Washington has no plan to delist the IRGC.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary stated the progress of Iran’s nuclear development “definitely worries us” and acknowledged that “Iran has rapidly accelerated its nuclear programme”. The U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We continue to believe that getting back into compliance with the agreement would be the best way to address the nuclear challenge posed by Iran”, he went on to say that Iran is “already acting with incredible aggression” and it must be prevented from matching this aggression with a nuclear weapon.
Biden also called Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett this week, in which among other issues, they discussed the nuclear deal, with President Biden preparing to visit Israel over the coming months.
These discussions surrounding the failure of the negotiations, come alongside provocative statements by the former Iranian politician Ali Motahari. In an interview with Iranian media, Motahari stated that Iran has always intended to build a nuclear bomb that would be used as a “means of intimidation”, citing a verse from the Quran: “Strike fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah”. He went on: “When we began our nuclear activity, our goal was indeed to build a nuclear weapon”. His statements contradict the Iranian government’s ongoing insistence that it has never intended to build nuclear weapons, a claim that has been previously rejected by Israeli and Western intelligence services.
The former Iranian MP believes Iran’s mistake was not keeping its plans secret long enough and that the country should have followed the likes of Pakistan and North Korea, which he said are now “taken into consideration” on the global stage due to developing their programmes in secret. He finished the interview arguing that he says this in a non-official capacity and that Iran’s Supreme Leader currently opposes building a nuclear device.
