WASHINGTON: Iran is capable of producing fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within “one or two weeks,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.
The details on Iran’s capabilities emerged following the recent election of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
He has said he wants to end Iran’s isolation and favors reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers.
Blinken said, however, that “what we’ve seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that’s actually moving forward” with its nuclear program.
In 2018, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal, which was designed to regulate Iran’s atomic activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Speaking at a security forum in Colorado, Blinken blamed the collapse of the nuclear deal for the acceleration in Iran’s capabilities.
“Instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, (Iran) is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” Blinken said.
He added that Iran had not yet developed a nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said last month that Iran is further expanding its nuclear capacities, with Tehran informing the agency that it was installing more cascades — or series of centrifuges used in enrichment — at nuclear facilities in Natanz and Fordow.
According to the IAEA, Iran is the only non-nuclear weapons state to enrich uranium to the high level of 60 percent — just short of weapons-grade — while it keeps accumulating large uranium stockpiles, enough to build several atomic bombs, the agency says.
Following the US withdrawal, the Islamic republic has gradually broken away from its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.
But the country’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri told CNN earlier this week that Iran remained committed to the accord, known as the JCPOA.
“We are still a member of JCPOA. America has not yet been able to return to the JCPOA, so the goal we are pursuing is the revival of the 2015 agreement,” he said. “We are not looking for a new agreement.”
Bagheri said no one in Iran had talked “about a new agreement. We have an agreement (signed) in 2015.”
Blinken was speaking just days after reports that the US Secret Service had increased security for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump weeks ago, after authorities learned of an alleged Iranian plot to kill him.
Tehran has denied the allegations.
Iran can produce fissile material for bomb in ‘one or two weeks’: Blinken
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Iran can produce fissile material for bomb in ‘one or two weeks’: Blinken
US plans meeting for Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ in Washington on Feb 19, Axios reports
- The Axios report cited a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board
- The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported
WASHINGTON: The White House is planning the first leaders meeting for President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” in relation to Gaza on February 19, Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official and diplomats from four countries that are on the board.
The plans for the meeting, which would also be a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction, are in early stages and could still change, Axios reported.
The meeting is planned to be held at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, the report added, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House on February 18, a day before the planned meeting.
The White House and the US State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
In late January, Trump launched the board that he will chair and which he says will aim to resolve global conflicts, leading to many experts being concerned that such a board could undermine the United Nations.
Governments around the world have reacted cautiously to Trump’s invitation to join that initiative. While some of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies have joined, many of its traditional Western allies have thus far stayed away.
A UN Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the board and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire began in October under a Trump plan on which Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas signed off.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan revealed late last year, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said it would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
Many rights experts say that Trump overseeing a board to supervise a foreign territory’s affairs resembled a colonial structure and have criticized the board for not including a Palestinian.The fragile ceasefire in Gaza has been repeatedly violated, with over 550 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers reported killed since the truce began in October. Israel’s assault on Gaza since late 2023 has killed over 71,000 Palestinians, caused a hunger crisis and internally displaced
Gaza’s entire population.
Multiple rights experts, scholars and a UN inquiry say it amounts to genocide. Israel calls its actions self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages in a late 2023 attack.
