{"id":231132,"date":"2025-02-03T20:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T20:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/03\/iran-is-developing-plans-for-faster-cruder-weapon-u-s-concludes\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T20:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T20:38:11","slug":"iran-is-developing-plans-for-faster-cruder-weapon-u-s-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/03\/iran-is-developing-plans-for-faster-cruder-weapon-u-s-concludes\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Is Developing Plans for Faster, Cruder Weapon, U.S. Concludes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-iran-nuclear-topart-wfvc\/03dc-iran-nuclear-topart-wfvc-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Iran Is Developing Plans for Faster, Cruder Weapon, U.S. Concludes\" title=\"Iran Is Developing Plans for Faster, Cruder Weapon, U.S. Concludes\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">New intelligence about Iran\u2019s nuclear program has convinced American officials that a secret team of the country\u2019s scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran\u2019s leadership decides to race for a bomb, according to current and former American officials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The development comes even amid signals that Iran\u2019s new president is actively seeking a negotiation with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The intelligence was collected in the last months of the Biden administration, then relayed to President Trump\u2019s national security team during the transition of power, according to the officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The intelligence assessment warned that Iranian weapons engineers and scientists were essentially looking for a shortcut that would enable them to turn their growing stockpile of nuclear fuel into a workable weapon in a matter of months, rather than a year or more \u2014 but only if Tehran made a decision to change its current approach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">U.S. officials said they continued to believe that Iran and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had not made that decision to develop a weapon, officials said in interviews over the past month. But new intelligence suggests that as Iran\u2019s proxy forces have been eviscerated and its missiles have failed to pierce American and Israeli defenses, the military is seriously exploring new options to deter a U.S. or Israeli attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Iran, officials said, remains at the nuclear threshold. In the years since Mr. Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord, the country has resumed uranium production and now has plenty of fuel to make four or more bombs. But that is not enough to actually produce a weapon, and the new evidence focuses on the last steps Iran would need to turn the fuel into one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The evidence is almost certainly bound to be part of the discussion on Tuesday between Mr. Trump and Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu is the first world leader to visit the White House since Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration two weeks ago. For years, the Israeli leader has walked to the edge of ordering an Israeli military strike on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, only to back away, often under pressure from his own military and intelligence chiefs, and the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the dynamic now is different, and Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s calculations may be, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Iran has never been weaker than it is today, in the view of American and Israeli officials. Hamas and Hezbollah, which it has funded and armed, have lost their leadership and their ability to strike Israel. Syria\u2019s leader, Bashar al-Assad, has fled to Moscow and his country is no longer an easy route for Iranian weapons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In October, an Israeli counterstrike on Iran took out the missile defenses around Tehran and some of the nuclear facilities. It also <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/10\/27\/us\/politics\/iran-israel-strikes-tehran.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE4.mQEw.A4wuU-0OzHj-&amp;smid=url-share\" title=\"\">struck the giant mixing devices<\/a> that make fuel for new missiles, crippling Iranian production.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump has indicated that he is in no hurry to get into a direct conflict with Iran, and seems open to a negotiation. When asked just after the inauguration whether he would support an Israeli strike on the facilities, he said: \u201cHopefully that can be worked out without having to worry about it. It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step.\u201d Iran, he added, will hopefully \u201cmake a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Iran\u2019s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who entered office in July after his predecessor was killed in a helicopter crash, has repeatedly said that he, too, would like to negotiate a new arrangement. But history suggests he may be unaware of what the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is working on as they prepare the nuclear option, former U.S. officials and Iran experts say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cPresident Pezeshkian and the Iranian foreign ministry likely have no knowledge about the regime\u2019s internal nuclear deliberations,\u201d said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe Islamic Republic has long had two parallel regimes,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a deep state of military and intelligence forces, reported to Khamenei, who oversee the nuclear program and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Then, he said, there are diplomats and politicians \u201cwho are authorized to speak to Western media and officials who have little if any knowledge of these activities\u201d but are given the task of denying them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">U.S. officials have long said Iran abandoned its weapons program in 2003, after the American invasion of Iraq. Iranian government officials have similarly insisted the country is pursuing civilian nuclear technology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, there is little doubt about Iran\u2019s long-running planning to produce a weapon. Documents Israel stole in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/15\/us\/politics\/iran-israel-mossad-nuclear.html\" title=\"\">a raid on a warehouse in Tehran in 2018<\/a> described the technical efforts in detail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If Tehran decides to change its policy and pursue a nuclear weapon, Western officials have long assessed that it would take only days for Iran to enrich uranium to a level of 90 percent, the purity typically needed to produce a bomb. It has already made enough fuel, enriched at 60 percent, to make four or five weapons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But enriching the uranium to bomb grade is not enough for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. And for years American officials have said it would take a year to 18 months to turn that highly enriched uranium into a sophisticated warhead capable of being mounted on a ballistic missile. Some Israeli estimates were even longer, upward of two years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Iranians have known for years that this long development time is a huge vulnerability. If the International Atomic Energy Agency, which still conducts limited inspections of nuclear fuel production, announced that Iran was producing bomb-grade fuel \u2014 enriched to 90 percent purity \u2014 Israel and the United States have warned in the past that they would most likely be forced to take military action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So Iran\u2019s best deterrent would be to convert that fuel into a working weapon. But it would not have much time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">U.S. officials believe Iran has the know-how to make an older-style nuclear weapon, one that could be put together far faster than the more sophisticated designs Tehran has considered in the past. (It most likely obtained the blueprints for such a weapon from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold the country <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/02\/12\/world\/a-tale-of-nuclear-proliferation-how-pakistani-built-his-network.html\" title=\"\">designs for its nuclear centrifuges<\/a> more than a quarter century ago.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Such a weapon would not be able to be miniaturized to fit on a ballistic missile. It would also probably be far less reliable than any more modern weapon design.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As a result, the weapon would be unlikely to be an immediate offensive threat. But such a crude weapon is the kind of device Iran could build quickly, test and declare to the world that it had become a nuclear power, U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While it would be difficult to use such a weapon against Israel, it could have a deterrent effect, making countries considering an attack against Iran think twice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/03\/us\/politics\/iran-nuclear-weapon.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New intelligence about Iran\u2019s nuclear program has convinced American officials that a secret team of the country\u2019s scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran\u2019s leadership decides to race for a bomb, according to current and former American officials. The development comes even amid signals that Iran\u2019s new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-iran-nuclear-topart-wfvc\/03dc-iran-nuclear-topart-wfvc-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4757,57195,180754,11093,163575,8623,180753,3096,19606,76822,4758,3091,76823,1925,52,221,128437,163486,71602,2477],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231134,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231132\/revisions\/231134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}