A major intelligence leader has told Congress that Iran has all the items it needs to build a nuclear weapon.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, sent a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee that states Iran has made enough significant advances in its nuclear program that if they chose to turn their back on world agreements and produce a nuclear weapon they could obtain it.
However, Clapper says that it would be very unlikely they would able to finish production of the weapon without other world powers discovering their work.
“We assess that Iran would not be able to divert safeguarded material and produce enough WGU (short for Weapons Grade Uranium) for a weapon before such activity would be discovered,” Clapper wrote. “The…central issue is its political will to do so.”
Clapper noted that Iran already has the largest stockpile of ballistic missiles in the Middle East and they are “inherently capable of delivering WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction).”
Iranian officials continue to speak out against the impressions given to media and the public by American officials regarding the recently implemented nuclear deal.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that their country has not dismantled a single piece of nuclear equipment. He admitted that they have stopped enriching uranium beyond 5% but said that they could increase that percentage at any time.
“The White House tries to portray it as basically a dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. That is the word they use time and again,” Zarif told CNN. “If you find a single, a single word, that even closely resembles dismantling or could be defined as dismantling in the entire text, then I would take back my comment.”
International observers have stated that if Iran chose to cancel the deal and return to enrichment, they have enough centrifuges to create weapons grade nuclear material for a nuclear bomb within weeks.
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.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator told citizens that the new agreement reached with western nations can be reversed in as little as one day.
Abbas Araghchi said that if Iran decides to enrich uranium to levels that can be used in nuclear weapons there would be little western nations could do to stop them before the beginning of the process.
“We can return again to 20 percent enrichment in less than one day and we can convert the [nuclear] material again. Therefore the structure of our nuclear program is preserved,” Araghchi said in the nationwide broadcast. “Whenever we feel the other side is not following through with its commitments, whenever we feel there are other motives involved, whenever—now, say, under pressure from Congress or something else—they take action against their commitments, say put in place new sanctions, we will immediately revert to the current status quo. And we will again continue our nuclear program in the form that it is today.”
The White House and State Department refused to comment to Daily Beast regarding the Iranian negotiator’s comments.
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