A former deputy director for the International Atomic Energy Agency said that despite the deal Iran has made with the west, they will remain just weeks away from a viable nuclear weapon.

Olli Heinonen said that if Iran decided to end the agreement and turn up their centrifuges, they could enrich enough uranium in a matter of weeks to create one nuclear bomb.

“If this all happens in the next, let’s say, weeks, this is really true. They can start to produce 20-percent enriched uranium,” Heinonen said on WABC. “Now, in order to go fast for Iran, it actually needs to make several such tandem cascades.  They have to put perhaps some 6,000 centrifuges to work in this kind of a mode.  If they do that, which they can technically do, it will take certainly a little bit more than one night to do. But then once they have sorted it out, it would take about two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”

Heinonen said if Iran follows through on their agreement to reduce their stockpiles of 20% enriched uranium to 5%, it would take longer for the country to produce a nuclear weapon.