Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed on Thursday that Iran currently has enough enriched uranium for five nuclear weapons, should it decide to weaponize that uranium and complete the detonation and delivery tasks for firing a weapon.
“Iran is not sufficing with one nuclear bomb. It has already accumulated enough enriched uranium at the 20% and 60% levels for five nuclear bombs,” the defense minister told his hosts during a visit to Greece.
Gallant added, “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.”
The defense minister suggested that he was taking the opportunity to discuss the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threats and regional terror in greater detail because there were recently efforts by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to perpetrate terror attacks against Jews in Greece.
Only top-level intelligence cooperation by the countries prevented a disaster, said Gallant.
A BIRD SITS on a radiation sign at the uranium ore dump near the town of Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan. (credit: PAVEL MIKHEYEV/REUTERS)IAEA reports on Iran’s enriched uranium
Previous reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said that Tehran had accumulated enough enriched uranium, at the high but still non-weaponized levels, for four nuclear weapons.
Gallant’s statement made it clear that the Islamic Republic’s build-up of its nuclear arsenal-in-waiting continues.
Recently a top US defense official said that Iran could weaponize the uranium in less than two weeks.
However, there is a debate as to whether it would take Iran’s weapons group six months or up to two years to complete the difficult detonation and delivery tasks required to file a nuclear weapon.
Part of the debate goes to unclear intelligence on how far along Iran was in the weapons group areas when it stopped some of those activities in 2003.
The Mossad unveiled significant aspects of the weapons group when it seized Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018.
That spy mission also established in Iranian documents that its goal had always been a minimum of a five-nuclear weapon arsenal, which it is now closer than ever to achieving.
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