The Islamic Republic of Iran reportedly has enough enriched uranium to produce five nuclear weapons, a top Israeli official warned this week.
The news comes as President Joe Biden’s administration has failed to secure a new nuclear agreement with Iran and has failed to stop Iran from continuing to develop its nuclear program.
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a trip to Greece on Thursday that Iran would “not be satisfied by a single nuclear bomb.”
“It has already accumulated enough enriched uranium at the 20% and 60% levels for five nuclear bombs,” he said. “If Iran enriches to the 90% weaponized level, it would be a great error and the price would be heavy, and there would be consequences which could inflame the Middle East.”
Uranium found in nature only contains 0.7% uranium-235 (U-235), which is needed to create the chain reaction that causes a nuclear explosion, the remaining 99.3% is uranium-238 (U-238). Scientists use centrifuges to separate the two isotopes and the remaining U-235 is taken and then further enriched to either be used for energy production, medical purposes, or nuclear weapons.
To make a nuclear weapon, scientists need to enrich uranium to 90%, however, enriching uranium to just 20% represents a major threat because “enriching uranium to 20% represents about 90% of the effort needed to produce weapons grade fissile material,” said the Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation. “Once a proliferator reaches this threshold, it could be ready to weaponize in a relatively short time.”
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said on Thursday that a nuclear Iran could fundamentally change geopolitics forever.
“To have Iran being able to threaten every city in the United States with nuclear blackmail is a changing of history,” Netanyahu told a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers. “Iran is 50 North Koreas. It is not merely a neighborhood bully like the dynasty that rules North Korea.”
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“This is an ideological force that views us, Israel, as the small Satan and views you as the Great Satan,” Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan claimed this week that despite the Biden administration’s failures on Iran, the administration “made clear to Iran that it can never be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
“As President [Joe] Biden has repeatedly reaffirmed, he will take the actions necessary to stand by this statement, including by recognizing Israel’s freedom of action,” Sullivan said. “This is an issue that occupies the president’s attention, my attention, on a daily basis. Iran’s program has advanced considerably. It is a genuine danger to regional security and to global security, and, indeed, to the United States of America. And we are going to continue to take action to, yes, deter Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and then to seek a diplomatic solution that puts this on a long-term pathway of stability.”