Iran has rapidly increased its production of near-weapons-grade uranium in recent weeks, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a recent report that the agency has confirmed twice in the last eight days that Iran has tripled its production of 60% enriched uranium over the last month, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The report noted that Iran is the only country in the world that is producing 60% enriched uranium that is not a declared nuclear power.
The news comes as tensions between the U.S. and Iran have risen significantly since the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas carried out an unprecedented terrorist attack against Israel on October 7. Since then Iranian-backed terrorists throughout the region have launched hundreds of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and against commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea.
Officials believe that it would only take Iran a matter of days to be able to convert 60% enriched uranium into the form needed for a nuclear weapon.
Richard Goldberg, a former Trump administration official and senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, called the news a “catastrophic policy failure on every level.”
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U.S. officials believe that Iran has enough stockpiled enriched uranium to build three nuclear weapons while Israeli officials believe that they have enough for at least five.
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,” the Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation notes. “Once a proliferator reaches this threshold, it could be ready to weaponize in a relatively short time.”